I reserved a unit a month ago. I'd love to see if the plan for the lower floors are more detailed now. Did they give you an idea of how long it will be before the legal papers are ready?
I am not an expert by any means, so talk to a lawyer. But as far as I know there are two different reasons a down payment and thus two sets of rules that apply.They need a certain amount of people to put down cash to show they are serious in order to get project financing to start construction. That is the payment to be made now which is capped at 20k. It is held to be applied to the purchase that will not close for a couple years. This secures the project financing telling the bank there are actually people who want to move in and the bank will not be stuck with an empty building.
Then, close to the time of move in there will be a closing date. At this time the developer has largely completed their work and it becomes the job of the new owners to finance their units. If you have cash you can pay cash and there is no issue. Most people will get a mortgage, but there is no reason you need to mortgage the whole thing, if you have savings you can use some of that and get a smaller mortgage. Even if you get the pre approval from BMO, you are not obliged to get a mortgage with them, they are just offering the capped rate so they know the prospective buyers have decent credit, giving themselves assurance the project financing is low risk.
I thought we could make the deposit in increments too, but I looked at a couple other projects and they accepted the deposit in increments over say 90 days, but the total deposit was much bigger.
At the end of the day they need some money to get the project financing and 5% or 20k seems to be it, for now.
Maybe we will chat in person some time.