Missing Initials on the Agreement

You have just received a 15 page Agreement of Purchase and Sale. You find that at the bottom of pages 9 and 12 the Seller forgot to initial the page.

Do you have a deal?

Surely, you don’t think that all 22,000 pages of NATFA were initialed. It might be nice, but likely a major waste of time. Significant commercial contracts are not initialed on every page. However, when it comes to the standard form OREA APS, we have the spot on each page either for a signature or initials.

Now, we have the next question: what if we are missing some? From a legal perspective it’s still a contract, we are just simply missing some initials. You still received the full 15 pages, executed, but without initials on two of the 15 pages.

So, you could ignore this issue and hope that it goes away. Get someone to add the initials after the fact. Get them to re-execute the contract and send it back with a new irrevocable. Get them simply to confirm by email that the two pages that they missed initialing were simply errors and those pages were indeed meant to be part of the contract.

On rare occasion, you will come across a Buyer who suffers buyer’s remorse. They want to weasel out of the deal and they will do anything, including taking the position that the contract is not a contract since there are two missing initials. This likely won’t work, but it won’t stop them from using the argument. They will use anything because they are desperate. So, if you are worried, get them to confirm that they are not a “weasel”.

Brian Madigan LL.B., Broker

www.OntarioRealEstateSource.com