About two years ago, my wife and I were buying our dream house.
We had been building toward it for years. We owned a townhouse and an investment property, and our plan was to take the equity from both and put it toward the home we’d always wanted. We had accepted firm offers on both properties. Conditions were waived. As far as we understood, the hard part was over.
Then closing day arrived.
We were at the lawyer’s office signing documents, expecting the funds to come through, when our lawyer looked up and said: “Sorry, we just found out the buyer isn’t going to close.”
We had no idea that this could happen. We found out the hard way that it does. They call it a buyer default. And really, from that moment, our entire world was spun out of control.
What we didn’t know — and what most sellers don’t know
Our first instinct was: fine, the buyer backed out on us, so we’ll back out on the house we’re buying. That’s not how it works.
Just because someone else defaulted on their obligation to us didn’t give us any clearance to default on ours. In fact, all the equity we had built in our properties over the years was now a target on our backs if we failed to complete our purchase. Our entire financial position was exposed.
So we scrambled. We got a bridge loan and pushed through. We bought the dream house. But now we had two properties and two mortgages. The house the buyer had walked away from needed to be staged again because we’d already moved out. It sat on the market for six months. When it finally sold, it sold for $100,000 less than the original offer.
When we added up the carrying costs, the staging, the second round of real estate commission, and the price drop, we came out of that experience with $150,000 less than we had planned for. That’s what we were supposed to bring into the next chapter of our lives. Instead, we were house poor for the first time in over a decade.
The gap we couldn’t believe existed
In the months that followed, I kept turning the situation over in my head. We had a legally binding contract. Through no fault of our own, we had suffered serious financial damages. And I started to wonder: surely there’s an insurance product for this.
I looked everywhere. My wife and I searched every corner of the internet. And we came to realize that not only did no such product exist in Canada — there was nothing like it anywhere in the world.
That’s when we knew we had to build it.
We were fortunate. We had a good real estate lawyer and a great agent who helped us navigate what could have been a complete catastrophe. Without them, we might have lost everything. We know that not every seller has that support around them. And nobody, regardless of who’s in their corner, should have to absorb that kind of loss because a buyer walked away.
Why Ottawa sellers need to think about this now
Ottawa has a specific quality that makes this risk more acute than people realize.
This is a federal city. Government relocation postings move constantly. A buyer who firms up on your home in March may be dealing with a posting change, a financing complication, or a life disruption by June. Meanwhile, you’ve already made your plans based on that sale. You may have purchased another property. You may have given notice somewhere. The cascade effect of a buyer default hits harder when you’re also mid-transaction on the other side.
And at Ottawa home prices — well above $600,000 for many properties — the numbers compound quickly. Six months of carrying costs, a resale at a lower price point, legal fees, and a second round of commission add up to the kind of loss that changes people’s financial trajectory.
Across Canada, serious mortgage delinquencies have jumped to roughly 0.2 to 0.25 per cent of borrowers. That’s on the order of 40,000 to 50,000 households now 90 days or more behind on payments. In Ontario alone, 90-day mortgage arrears have spiked more than 70 per cent year-over-year, making buyer defaults and last-minute closing delays anything but edge cases. They’re a measurable, fast-growing risk that sellers are still absorbing with virtually no protection.
What we built to fix it
SecureMyOffer is the product my wife and I went looking for and couldn’t find.
We partnered with Accelerant Insurance Company of Canada to build a closing insurance policy for home sellers. If a buyer defaults or delays and the home eventually sells for less, we cover the price difference, up to $250,000. We cover carrying costs during the gap, legal fees, staging, and the commission on the second sale. And if you need liquidity on closing day itself, we provide an emergency equity advance so you’re not left scrambling while the legal process catches up.
Sellers apply through their listing agent within ten days of a firm offer. That’s the window. It’s straightforward, and the premium is a fraction of what a single month of carrying costs would run on a property at Ottawa prices.
We built this because we lived the alternative. Every seller deserves to know this protection exists before they need it.
About the Author
Morgan Girouard is the CEO and Founder of SecureMyOffer, an Ottawa-based insurtech company providing home seller closing insurance across Canada (with the exception of Quebec). Learn more at securemyoffer.com.
