Guides
PSA Critical Dates: a Due Diligence Timeline Checklist
July 18, 2025
In an acquisition, the purchase and sale agreement (PSA) is a calendar as much as it is a contract. PSA critical dates — earnest money deposits, inspection periods, financing contingencies, closing — decide whether a deal stays alive. This checklist helps acquisitions teams pull those dates out of the PSA into a diligence timeline they can actually run.
Miss a date and you may forfeit deposit rights, lose a walk-away window, or scramble into closing. The goal of abstraction is to make those deadlines visible early.
What counts as a PSA critical date?
Typical CRE PSA timelines include:
- Effective / execution date — when clocks often start
- Earnest money deposit deadlines — initial and additional deposits
- Due diligence / inspection period end — when the buyer must object or proceed
- Financing contingency deadline — if the PSA includes one
- Title / survey objection deadlines
- Established closing date — and any extension mechanics
- Assignment deadlines (1031 or entity changes), when relevant
- Other notice windows that create or kill a contingency right
Lease portfolios and PSA deals often sit in the same firm. Lease renewals belong in critical date management; PSA clocks belong in the deal room — but the discipline is the same: notice windows and hard stops, extracted once, tracked daily.
Diligence timeline checklist
Work top to bottom when the PSA (and amendments) land.
1. Lock the document set
- Fully executed PSA
- All amendments and side letters that change dates or deposit amounts
- Exhibits that define property, deposits, or form of deed if your process requires them
- Deal name / property and version date labeled
2. Map the money dates
- Initial earnest money — amount and deposit due date
- Additional earnest money — amount and due date (if any)
- Conditions under which deposits become non-refundable
- Who holds escrow and how release works (high-level)
Synthetic example (illustrative only): PSA effective 06/01/2026; $50000 initial deposit due within three business days; additional $50000 due at end of diligence; closing 45 days after diligence waiver. Your abstract should surface each due date as a field, not bury it in a narrative summary.
3. Map the diligence and contingency clocks
- Diligence / inspection period length and end date
- How the period is calculated (calendar vs. business days; start trigger)
- Financing contingency deadline
- Appraisal, environmental, or other specialty contingencies and their ends
- Title and survey objection periods
- Seller deliverable deadlines that gate buyer obligations
4. Map closing and extension mechanics
- Scheduled closing date
- Who can extend, for how long, and with what notice or fee
- Conditions precedent that must be satisfied before closing
- Termination rights tied to failed contingencies (and notice form)
5. Put dates where the team will see them
- Dates entered into the deal tracker / critical dates tracking where your firm consolidates deadlines
- Owners assigned (acquisitions lead, counsel, escrow contact)
- Reminders set before each hard stop — not on the day of
- Amendment process defined: if a date moves, the tracker updates the same day
Why PSA abstraction beats highlighting the PDF
Highlighting works for one deal. It fails when three deals run in parallel and the same associate owns deposit calendars for all of them. PSA due diligence software pulls earnest money, contingencies, and closing terms into structured fields with source links so counsel can verify against the clause in one click.
That is the same verification pattern DealLink uses for leases — different field set, same discipline. Broader context: What Is Contract Abstraction?.
Common PSA date mistakes
- Tracking closing but not the diligence end date (the walk-away that matters first)
- Recording “30 days” without computing the calendar end date from the trigger
- Ignoring amendments that shortened or extended a period
- Treating earnest money as one lump instead of staged deposits with separate due dates
- No single owner for the timeline after the LOI excitement fades
Mini checklist you can copy
- Full PSA package assembled
- Earnest money dates mapped
- Diligence / contingency ends mapped
- Closing + extension mechanics mapped
- Dates in shared tracker with owners
- Reminders before each hard stop
- Amendment update rule agreed
Related
See how DealLink handles this today.
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