Home Buyer Rescission Period

BC's Home Buyer Rescission Period (HBRP), effective January 3, 2023, gives a buyer of residential real property 3 business days after offer acceptance to rescind for any reason. The rescission fee is 0.25% of the purchase price written into the contract, payable to the seller.

Four kinds of sale sit outside it entirely, and on those there is no rescission right to rely on: a property sold under court order or court supervision, which includes a foreclosure; a property sold at auction; residential property on leased land; and a presale where the developer has to give a disclosure statement, because that triggers a different seven-day right under the Real Estate Development Marketing Act, with no fee attached. The HBRP cannot be waived by contract. It applies even when the offer is unconditional (no subjects/conditions). It does NOT extend or replace the subject-removal period — subject conditions, when present, still operate independently after the HBRP elapses. The HBRP exists to protect buyers in heated multi-offer scenarios who feel pressured to write unconditional offers.

Counting the three days is where it goes wrong. The clock starts the day AFTER the seller accepts, so the acceptance date itself is not day one, and the right expires at 11:59 pm on the third business day.

The days that drop out are Saturdays, Sundays and holidays as the Interpretation Act defines them, which is not the same list as the statutory holidays an employer observes. It includes Easter Monday and December 26, neither of which is a BC statutory holiday, so counting either as a business day costs you a day of a three-day right. It runs the other way too: where a holiday falls on a weekend, the Monday taken in lieu is an ordinary business day and it counts.

A holiday is the only thing that shifts the pattern below, and it shifts it by one business day each time. Drop Good Friday into the Wednesday row and the deadline moves from Monday to Tuesday. The BC Real Estate Association publishes a calculator, but it sits behind the REALTOR® member portal, so a week with a holiday in it is the one worth asking your agent to check.