The walk-through, before anything is bought

The Margins

Nothing has been bought for the house yet. No paint, no new bulbs, no new cabinet handles, no storage unit rented for the overflow. The coats are on their hooks and the mail is on the counter, and the first visit is made to the house exactly as you live in it.

You hear the suggestions, and you decide

A coat of paint in one room, or a bedroom with half its furniture carried out. Changes like these can help a price, and they come up while the price is being worked out, before a single photograph is taken, so the photographs already carry them. We suggest. You decide, because it is your home and you are still living in it.

The house is measured to a provincial standard

Size in an Alberta listing follows the Residential Measurement Standard, which the regulator requires every residential licensee to use. A detached house is measured at the exterior wall at the foundation. An apartment condominium is measured paint to paint along the inside of its perimeter walls. A floor with any part below grade stays out of the figure, finished or not. The result has to land within two per cent of the standard's own number, and it is never copied from an earlier listing or taken from a builder's figure.

Stating a size in a listing is optional, and a size that appears has to follow the standard. For a condominium, the measured size and the unit size on the registered plan can differ, and you hear about that difference before the listing goes up. A sketch of each floor, the measurements, the calculations and the date go into your file. The regulator's measurement bulletin lets the seller hold the end of the tape.

Everyone on title, settled early

We ask who is on title, and where one owner holds it alone, whether that owner is married. Alberta's Dower Act stops a married person selling the home they have lived in without the spouse's written consent, and the listing agreement asks about it in a section of its own, so the answer is settled long before an offer arrives. Everyone selling also has their identity verified, which federal rules require of us when we act in a sale.

What you know goes in writing

The listing agreement asks in writing what you know about the house, from a hidden defect an ordinary inspection would miss to a notice from a government office, and it asks about any work on the property done without a permit. Your answers are the start of what a buyer is told. We carry a duty of our own as well, since the regulator's rules have us disclose to every buyer any hidden defect of that kind we know about. What to start before the sign goes up covers the survey, the City's compliance stamp, the title search and the condominium documents.

The recent sales, with the working shown

The price conversation starts from homes nearby that have sold, chosen because they compare with yours. Each one comes with what had to be added or taken away to make the comparison fair, written down. A legal suite or an illegal one, the garage, the age of the mechanical, the lot, the condition, and the months that have passed since the sale. You get the sales and the notes on each. The number the house goes on the market at is yours, and you will have seen how every sale bears on it.

Two documents come before any listing

The regulator's two-page guide to the relationships you can have with a real estate professional comes first, and we are required to present it and go through it with you. Our brokerage works as a designated agency, so the relationship is with your agent personally. Then the listing agreement, which Alberta requires in writing. It names what we will do, what you agree to do, how long it runs and how it ends, and you get your own copy the moment it is signed.

The notes become the listing

Everything written down on the walk-through ends up somewhere. The measurements go into the listing's fields, and every field is read against the notes before the listing publishes. The rooms go into the paragraph a buyer reads first, which is written from these notes, as how your listing gets written sets out.

When the visit ends the house is as you left it that morning, and everything learned about it is written down. After the photographs comes the week the listing goes live.