A Common Real Estate Mistake Made When Selling Your Home!

Let's talk about surprises!

Now, I'm not talking about surprises like on Christmas day or surprise parties; those are all good surprises. However, when surprises happen in real estate, unfortunately, they're usually not good. Nobody likes surprises in a real estate transaction because they usually end up costing you a lot of money. So, the reason I bring this up is I was surprised this week by something that happened in a real estate transaction. Now, you think after 33 or 34 years in the business, nothing would surprise me anymore, but this one definitely did, and so I'm going to share it with you in a little bit and also tell you how to avoid it because it's really actually quite simple.

Now, if you're buying or selling, you'll want to keep reading because even as a buyer, you're going to want to know this. There is an important document that you want to be familiar with if you're selling. This is probably the first and most important thing you can do before even putting your home on the market. If your guess is to call me, well, I can't tell you you're wrong; that's a great first step, but that's not what I'm looking for. In fact, what I'm looking for is to order and have a current real property report and compliance certificate. Now, what is that? It's actually a survey of your property, and you're going to get this from an Alberta Land Surveyor. It's going to show you the property outline and any improvements on your property, like fences, decks, hot tubs, all those sorts of things.

Now, why do you need this? Well, there's a clause in the offer-to-purchase contract that says the seller will provide the buyer with a new or current real property report and compliance. The buyer wants this because they want to know what they're buying; they don't want any surprises or to inherit any problems, and so this is really the only way that you can prove that your property complies. Now, this applies to all single-family homes, duplexes and bare-land condos but not conventional condos. What I see a lot of is people going ahead and signing an offer-to-purchase contract on their home, and they don't know whether their property complies or not, and that's a big mistake because once you sign that contract, you don't have any wiggle room. You've got to make your property comply. Everybody thinks their property complies, but you'd be surprised that half of the ones I see come back don't comply, and it could be little things, or it could be more major!

To learn more, watch the video below as I discuss more about RPRs and what you should do to protect yourself!

If you are thinking of selling your home and would like more information on Real Property Reports visit https://www.dwightstreu.com/blog/real-property-report/ You’ll find instructions on how you can order a Real Property Report.

If you have any questions, you can call me at 780-462-5002 or talk to your lawyer. Your lawyer will love you for knowing about this before hand because they are often the ones who have to try to clean up the mess when you don’t.