A residential real estate closing in Ontario involves dozens of moving pieces — agreement of purchase and sale, schedules and amendments, mortgage documents, title work, status certificates, financing waivers, FINTRAC verification, and the closing day handoff. Most of those touch a signature. Here’s a practical agent checklist that assumes e-signature flows from the start, with the gotchas marked.
Phase 1 — Pre-offer
- Listing Agreement (OREA Form 200). Sign with seller. Include any schedules covering commissions and holdback terms.
- Working with a Realtor (Form 810 / RECO Information Guide). Recipient acknowledgement captured electronically; the audit trail records the receipt event.
- FINTRAC ID verification. Capture government-issued ID and the verification method on file before any reportable activity.
- Buyer Representation Agreement (Form 300). If working with the buyer side.
Phase 2 — Offer to acceptance
- Agreement of Purchase and Sale (Form 100).The core document. Include all relevant schedules — Schedule A (custom terms), Schedule B (chattels & fixtures), and any property-specific addenda.
- Confirmation of Cooperation (Form 320). Between cooperating brokerages.
- Notice of Fulfilment / Waiver (Form 123/124). Once conditions clear, signed by the appropriate party.
- Amendments (Form 120). Any change to the original APS — price, dates, inclusions — captured as a separate amendment, not a re-do of the original.
Phase 3 — Conditional period
- Financing condition. Lender approval letter on file before waiver.
- Home inspection. Inspector report received and reviewed; any negotiated remediation captured as an amendment.
- Status certificate (condos). Reviewed within the conditional window; any red flags re-negotiated or unwound.
- Insurance binder.Confirmed before closing — the lender will require it.
Phase 4 — Closing day
- Final walkthrough. 24-48 hours before closing. Photos timestamped.
- Lawyer document package.Lawyer-side closing documents are typically signed in person or through the lawyer’s own e-signing flow — coordinate, don’t duplicate.
- Trust funds & key release. Confirmation from the lawyer that funds have moved and the title transfer is registered.
- Final closing package. Bundle the signed APS, all amendments, waivers, and supporting documents into a single archive for client and brokerage records.
What e-signing changes (and what it doesn’t)
With OREA forms going through e-signing, the workflow compresses dramatically — what used to take hours of drive time and printer queues happens in minutes. The audit trail produced for each envelope is the kind of evidence that, in a contested closing, becomes the documentation you didn’t know you needed. See our breakdown of what’s in a court-admissible audit trail for what to expect.
Two things e-signing doesn’t change: the lawyer-side closing (still typically run by your real estate lawyer using their own platform) and any remaining wet-ink requirements (rare, but they exist for some mortgage instruments). Keep the e-sign workflow for the brokerage side and coordinate the rest.
The brokerage’s record
Every transaction generates a paper trail your brokerage is required to keep — RECO bylaws, FINTRAC retention, insurance audit, sometimes for seven years or longer. The platform you use to sign should be the same platform that holds the archive, because every envelope, audit log, and certificate ends up in one place. Searching for “the agreement on Maple Street from 2024” should take five seconds, not five hours.