As everyone else different times and different properties have anywhere between day of to day, two, or more before arrival.

Last year I remember driving from the airport to the customer and talked to PP line. They found me a FS much closer to the customer (that was previously sold out) that was already past the cancellation time and my existing (20 miles away in major metro area) reservation was past the cancellation time as well. PP called closer hotel first, put reservation in (making sure if cancellation on the other one is not going to be free I won't have to pay for this one as well), then checked with further away hotel and canceled it w/o penalty.

At the end I was happy to be much closer for about the same amount of $ and PP line helped me w/o cancellation penalty.