Before the sign goes up

A FOUNDRY COMPANY FIELD GUIDE · NO. 10

The work that decides whether a sale closes smoothly happens weeks before we photograph the kitchen. Four things want starting early. The survey, the compliance, the title and the written record of what you know about the house.

The Real Property Report is the long pole

A Real Property Report is a survey drawing prepared by a registered Alberta land surveyor showing where the structures on your land actually sit. A Certificate of Compliance is the City of Calgary confirming, on that drawing, that those locations comply with the Land Use Bylaw. The seller orders the survey and then applies to the City for the compliance.

The City publishes a review time for each property type on its compliance page, and the number moves. A townhouse or rowhouse runs a two-week review with a one-week expedited option. Those reviews are quick on their own. Started the week you wanted to list, they are the thing you are waiting on.

A compliance covers where the structures sit and nothing else

The City states its own limits plainly. A Certificate of Compliance does not regulate or enforce building code requirements, and it is not confirmation of permit history. It answers one question, which is whether the buildings are where the bylaw allows buildings to be.

Several things are not reviewed for bylaw compliance at all. Fences. Retaining walls. Driveway width. Parcel coverage. Building height. Small accessory buildings. A clean compliance is a narrow document, and reading it as a clean bill of health for the property is reading something that was never written.

The review does look at encroachment into City land or a City right-of-way. Sheds in an overland drainage right-of-way are the common one, with fences, retaining walls and planters over the line close behind.

Non-compliance has three routes and the City names all three

The usual causes are structural and dull. Eaves and cantilever projections too close to the side property line. Decks too close to a side or rear line. Privacy walls built under the required height. Porches too close to the side line. Sheds and garages too close to the house.

Where the drawing comes back non-compliant, the City sets out three ways forward. Resubmit a corrected Real Property Report. Remove or modify the structure. Or apply for a relaxation through a development permit, which is assessed case by case, is never guaranteed, and gives affected parties an opportunity to comment.

None of those three is quick. That is the argument for ordering the survey early rather than after an offer arrives with a deadline on it.

What you know about the house has to go in writing

Alberta has no statutory disclosure form. The obligation arrives through the contract instead, and the term to know is the material latent defect, meaning a defect that cannot be found on a reasonable inspection and that affects the use or the value of the property. Both halves have to be true. A defect that is serious but visible is the buyer's to find, and a defect that is hidden but trivial does not trigger the duty.

The standard Alberta contract makes it a seller warranty that known material latent defects have been disclosed in writing in the contract itself, and extends the same warranty to government and local authority notices and to a lack of permits for work done on the property, where the seller knows about it. The permit clause is the one that surprises people, and it reaches a basement somebody finished twenty years ago.

The duty also runs to us separately. The rules we work under require us to disclose to all buyers every material latent defect we know about. That obligation is ours and you cannot instruct it away, which is useful to know before the conversation rather than during it.

Read your own title before a buyer's lawyer does

Pull the title and read what is registered against it. Easements, utility rights-of-way, restrictive covenants and homeowner association caveats are ordinary and generally travel with the property. Financial encumbrances and construction liens have to come off, and finding one in week six of a listing is a different problem from finding one in week one.

Two warranties in the standard contract sit on top of title and repay a check against reality. That the current use complies with the land use bylaw and any restrictive covenant. And that the buildings sit on your land rather than over an easement, a right-of-way or a neighbour's line, unless there is a registered agreement or written municipal approval covering it. Dower is the third, and where a spouse holds dower rights the paperwork is a known step.

A condo seller starts earlier than everybody else

If you are selling a condominium, the documents come from the corporation rather than from you, on a written request, and the corporation has a statutory window to produce them. That window is short and it starts when somebody asks, so the request wants making early. What is in a set of Alberta condo documents covers what arrives and what to read in it.

Start six weeks before you want the sign in the ground

The survey, the title search and the written disclosure all run on somebody else's calendar. Started early they are administrative. Started late they are the reason a closing slips, and a closing that slips lands on the day somebody else has booked a truck. What actually happens on possession day is the far end of the same chain.

Photograph the kitchen last.