Selling a house as is in Alberta does not switch off the standard contract

Selling as is means you are not doing the repairs and not giving credits for them. It does not mean the house arrives at closing with no paperwork attached, and that is where Alberta sellers get caught.

The standard Alberta residential purchase contract keeps running underneath an as-is deal. Four of its obligations survive the words entirely, and none of them are about repairs.

"As is" is a price term. People read it as a legal shield.

Every page selling this idea describes the same thing: no renovations, no staging, no fixing the furnace before the inspection. That part is accurate, and it is why people choose it.

What almost none of them say is what the phrase does not do. Search "selling a house as is in Alberta" and the first page is nearly all cash-buying companies, this business included. They explain that you skip repairs, then stop.

The survey is not a repair, so it does not go away

This is the one that catches people, and it costs money before closing.

Clause 10.2 of the Alberta Real Estate Association's Residential Purchase Contract makes the seller deliver, as a closing document, "an RPR showing the current improvements on the Property according to the Alberta Land Surveyors' Association Manual of Standard Practice, with evidence of municipal compliance or non-conformance." The obligation only lifts if there are no structures on the land.

A Real Property Report is a survey drawing by an Alberta Land Surveyor. The compliance half is a separate step at the municipality, and in Calgary it has a published price and a published queue:

Swipe the table sideways →

One line in that table is worth reading twice, because we had it compressed until October 2026 and a seller could have budgeted the wrong number from it. The City charges $189 per parcel for a single townhouse or rowhouse unit, the same as for a detached house. The $281 figure is for a townhouse or rowhouse complex, and the $432 expedited rate sits on that row rather than being an option on every application. If you are selling one unit, the fee is the lower one. The City publishes these in a planning applications fee schedule and does not print an effective date beside them on the page, so confirm the current amount before you budget it.

Those figures come from the City's own Certificate of Compliance page, and they assume the drawing comes back clean. If it does not, say a deck built without a permit or a garage over the setback, the City's options are to remove or modify the structure and resubmit, or to apply for a relaxation, which the City says is decided case by case and may be refused.

That is the real cost of an old survey on an older house: not the $189, the month.

This section is the one the rest of this blog points back at whenever the survey comes up, so two pointers the other way. Where compliance sits among everything else a sale costs is in what it costs to sell a house in Alberta, and the version of this obligation that applies to a bare land condominium unit, where the report is still the seller's to produce, is in selling a condo in Alberta.

The survey already in your drawer may be most of the answer

Sellers assume an old Real Property Report is worthless. Usually it is not.

The Alberta Land Surveyors' Association says a Real Property Report does not expire. It goes out of date when improvements are added or changed, and the surveyor who drew the original may be able to update it rather than start again. On a house where nothing has been built since the last sale, that is the difference between a queue and a phone call.

The catch is how little it takes to make a drawing stale. The City wants every structure on the parcel shown, and the list it gives includes decks, sheds, fences, retaining walls, window wells and air conditioning units. The fence you and the neighbour split the cost of, or the new condenser beside the back step, is enough to put the old drawing out of date.

So the useful first move is not a repair estimate. It is finding the last RPR, checking what is in the yard that is not on it, and calling the surveyor whose name is in the corner.

A house sold as is still has to arrive in the condition it was sold in

Clause 2.4 is short and it is the one sellers break by accident: "The seller represents and warrants that on Completion Day, the Property will be in substantially the same condition as when this contract was accepted and the attached and unattached goods will be in normal working order."

An as-is price is set against the house as it stood the day the buyer agreed to it, and it is not a licence to let it get worse afterwards. Two things go wrong in that window:

• Vacant houses in an Alberta winter. Heat off, a line freezes, and the condition on Completion Day is not the condition on acceptance day. Check what your insurer requires for a vacant property.
• Removing things. Appliances, light fixtures, the shed at the back. If they were attached goods, or unattached goods listed in the contract, they are part of what was sold whatever the price was.

The words "as is" do not appear anywhere in that clause, and nothing about an as-is negotiation changes it unless both sides write the change in.

The order an as-is sale actually runs in

Nothing in this sequence is a repair, which is the point.

• Acceptance. The price is set against the house as it stands that day, and from that moment clause 2.4 is running.
• The buyer's conditions, if there are any. A buyer using a mortgage brings a lender and an insurer into the decision, and that is where an as-is house quietly dies.
• Survey and compliance. Start this first rather than last. It is the only step on the list with a queue you do not control.
• The lawyer's title work and payouts.

A seller who starts the survey in week one and a seller who starts it in week three sign the same contract and close a month apart. That lender and insurer step has a chain of its own, followed in detail in selling a house with poly-B plumbing.

The only disclosure that survives an as-is clause is the hidden, serious kind

Alberta runs on caveat emptor, buyer beware, for what a buyer can see. A cracked driveway, a stained ceiling, a roof visibly at the end of its life: you are not obliged to write those down.

The exception is the material latent defect, and the Alberta Real Estate Association's explanation of the term is the clearest short version: "material means major, and latent means hidden." It has to be both. Clause 6.1(f) of the purchase contract then turns that into a promise you sign: known material latent defects, if any, "have been disclosed in writing in this contract."

The obligation is about known defects, so if you genuinely do not know, you do not know. If you do know, write it down, because a buyer already paying an as-is price is rarely surprised by it. What you have to disclose when selling a house in Alberta covers where that writing has to sit to count. Where a particular defect falls is a question for your own lawyer, not for a page like this one.

What actually changes in a private cash sale

Selling directly to a company that buys houses does not delete any of the above. It moves who carries it.

Clauses 2.4, 5.1, 6.1 and 10.2 are terms of a standard form rather than provincial law, and parties who agree otherwise in writing can agree otherwise. The RPR is the usual place that happens: buyers are regularly asked to accept title insurance in lieu of a Real Property Report, which is not a straight swap, since title insurance covers a loss while a survey with compliance tells you what is actually there.

If the survey step is what stands between you and a closing date, raise it with the buyer early and ask the lawyer doing your conveyance whether that makes sense in your deal.

On our side, how it works sets out the sequence and what we pay explains how a number gets made.

When selling as is is the wrong answer for you

If the house is in decent shape and you are not on a clock, listing it will very likely put more in your pocket than any as-is offer, ours included. The repairs you would be skipping are not expensive enough to justify the discount, and Matthew will say so:

"If your house is in good to great condition and you're not in a hurry, listing with a Realtor may be a better option, and I'll tell you so to your face."

An as-is sale earns its place in the other case: when the work is beyond what you can fund or manage, when a lender will not finance the house as it stands, or when a fixed date is worth more than the last stretch of price. If a court process has already started a clock of its own, selling a house in foreclosure in Alberta sets out what each month of waiting adds. If the issue is the building itself, selling a damaged house in Calgary covers that case. If it came through an estate, selling an inherited house is the better start, and the title work after probate usually matters more than the condition does.