Real Estate Law Blog

The proverbial ground is shifting beneath the feet of lenders, mortgage brokers and administrators in British Columbia with the introduction of the new Mortgage Services Act (the “MSA”) by the B.C. legislature on October 4, 2022.

Expected to come into force in late 2023, the MSA replaces the current (and arguably outdated) Mortgage Brokers Act (the “MBA”) by ...

If you are a land owner in British Columbia, you may have recently received a letter from the province’s Land Owner Transparency Registry (“LOTR”) indicating the need to file a transparency report by November 30, 2022.

Effective November 30, 2020, the British Columbia Land Owner Transparency Act (“LOTA”) came into force. LOTA is intended to increase land ...

Significant changes to Alberta’s Builders’ Lien Act came into effect this week. The major changes, introduced by Bill 37 Builders’ Lien (Prompt Payment) Amendment Act, 2020, include:

1. Renaming the Builders’ Lien Act to the Prompt Payment and Construction Lien Act;
2. Setting prompt payment timelines;
3. Extending timelines for registering liens;
4. Mandatory release ...

The Alberta Land Titles Office (the “LTO”) has long been subject to registration delays, with the gap between submission of a document to the LTO and completion of its registration historically taking one to two weeks. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and recent hot Alberta real estate market, have resulted in the average LTO registration time increasing significantly ...

On April 7, 2022, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland introduced the 2022 Federal Budget (the “Budget”). Included in the Budget are the following real estate related measures:

1. Two-Year Ban on Foreign Homebuyers. The Budget contemplates new rules to prohibit foreign commercial enterprises and individuals who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents from ...

Canada has recently introduced legislation to implement an Underused Housing Tax (UHT).^[1] (You can read our blog on this legislation here) The UHT will apply to non-resident, non-Canadian owners of residential property. As others have pointed out, the UHT contains some unusual policy choices.^[2] For example, if the goal of the UHT is to increase housing supply, it should ...

Over the last few months, the Underused Housing Tax Act (the “Act”) has moved through the House of Commons and is currently in the final steps of the report stage. If the Act is ultimately brought into force, it will implement an annual tax of 1% on the vacant or underused residential real estate, directly or indirectly owned by non-Canadians.

Whom does the Underused ...

What happens when an individual buyer or seller dies prior to the completion of a transaction involving real estate? This blog post discusses the complications that can arise in real estate transactions where there is a piece of land under contract and the individual seller or buyer dies prior to the completion of the transaction.

At common law, a contract may be discharged or ...

In a recent decision, the B.C. Supreme Court confirmed the validity of a relatively common form of allocation of parking stalls and storage lockers in condominium developments.

The case One West Holdings Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 2995 (“One West”) involved a strata development in Vancouver. During the development process, but before the strata plan was ...

The B.C. government announced on November 2, 2021 that it will be extending the deadline for pre-existing owners to file with the Land Owner Transparency Registry, giving reporting bodies with an interest in land more time to file a transparency report without incurring penalties.

The Province has heard from lawyers (including Lawson Lundell lawyers) and others that ...