The Acquisition Purchase Agreement Ticket

The Acq - Purchase Agreement ticket is the controlled process that contracts an acquisition and moves the deal to Under Contract. This article shows you how to create the ticket on an acquisition deal, walk it through its statuses, attach the signed document correctly, and understand why the deal's stage changes when you sign — which in turn triggers the Property and loan REDA creates (covered in Property Creation and Funding an Acquisition). Every "why can't I…" here is answered with the exact message REDA shows. No prior REDA experience is assumed.

What the purchase agreement ticket does

A ticket in REDA is a short, controlled process you work step by step — moving its status is running the process, and finishing it moves the parent record forward. The Acq - Purchase Agreement ticket is the process for contracting an acquisition: as you drive it to signed, it advances the deal to Under Contract. For the ticket engine in general, see Understanding Tickets.

This ticket type has its own status Path — New (default), In Process, Contract Sent, Contract Signed, Closed, and Cancelled — and its approval starts at Draft.

Creating the ticket

Create the ticket from the acquisition deal (or from the Tickets tab, linking the deal). Two rules govern what you can link:

When you create the ticket, REDA quietly records the deal's current stage so it can undo the change later if you cancel — you don't touch that.

The status path

Each status move has a defined effect on the deal:

So sending the contract out (Contract Sent) doesn't move the deal — unlike property sales, acquisitions have no intermediate "Contract Out" stage. Only signing or closing the ticket advances it, and it goes straight to Under Contract.

Attaching the signed contract

The ticket records how the agreement was signed — Paper (which needs an uploaded file) or Electronic. Two validations keep the paperwork honest:

The first fires if you try to flag the document as attached before a file actually exists on the ticket. The second stops you closing a paper-signed ticket with no file. In both cases: upload the file first, then proceed.

What signing does

Setting the ticket to Contract Signed (or Closed) advances the deal to Under Contract. That's a milestone: once the deal reaches Under Contract it becomes active, and — if no Property was linked yet — REDA creates the Property record and a placeholder loan for it. That whole automation is covered in Property Creation and Funding an Acquisition; here it's enough to know the signing is what sets it off.

Cancelling the ticket

Set the ticket to Cancelled and the deal rewinds to the stage it was on when the ticket was created — REDA remembers that stage from the moment of creation. The rewind is a safety net: it only applies if the deal is still in the stage this ticket set, so cancelling never overwrites a stage some later process has since moved the deal to.

The walkthrough

Worked example: contracting Meridian Court

On Meridian Properties' deal "Meridian Court [ Acquisition ]" (at Offering, binder recorded), Meridian creates an Acq - Purchase Agreement ticket. They send the agreement to Continental Holdings and move the ticket to Contract Sent — the deal stays at Offering, since acquisitions have no Contract Out stage. Continental signs; Meridian uploads the signed PDF, sets the signing type to Electronic, and moves the ticket to Contract Signed → the deal advances to Under Contract. Because the deal is now active with no Property linked yet, REDA creates the Property "Meridian Court" and a placeholder loan (continued in Property Creation and Funding an Acquisition). Had Meridian tried to close a paper-signed ticket before uploading the contract, they'd have hit "Please attach Document prior closing Ticket."

An Acq - Purchase Agreement ticket. Its status Path runs New → In Process → Contract Sent → Contract Signed → Closed (with a Cancelled branch); here the ticket is still at New. Advancing it to Contract Signed — after the signed file is attached — is what pushes the parent deal to Under Contract.

Where to go next

1. Property Creation and Funding an Acquisition — what Under Contract triggers, and how to fund the purchase.
2. Running an Acquisition Deal — Binder to Contract — getting the deal to the point of contracting.
3. Understanding Tickets — the ticket engine and its snapshot/revert behavior.
4. How Acquisitions Work in REDA — the whole pipeline map.

Frequently asked questions