Real Estate Law Blog

The ongoing global pandemic is currently having an enormous impact on commercial retailers, restaurants, and other commercial tenancies in, among other places, British Columbia and Alberta. We have recently seen a number of tenant defaults (or potential defaults depending on the wording of the relevant lease) which include failing to pay rent and closing down ...

On February 18, 2020, the government of B.C. introduced its 2020 provincial budget. Included in the budget is a new exemption from the additional property transfer tax, commonly known as the “foreign buyers’ tax”, which will be available for qualifying Canadian-controlled limited partnerships. Though the specific language of the exemption will not be confirmed ...

In the cases referred to as Vavilov or the Trilogy – Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 and Bell Canada v. Canada (Attorney General), 2019 SCC 66 – the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) clarified the framework for judicial review of administrative decisions. In the Trilogy, the SCC has ostensibly simplified the law by redefining the ...

This is the first in a series of articles to be published by Lawson Lundell on the subject of the BC Government’s Land Owner Transparency Act (British Columbia) (“LOTA”).

In 2018, the B.C. government released a White Paper on LOTA which set out a draft legislative framework for the introduction of a publicly accessible registry (the “Registry”) for the disclosure ...

In Interville Development Limited Partnership v The Owners, Strata Plan BCS2313, 2019 BCSC 112, the case involves a dispute between a strata corporation known as “Firenze” within the “International Village” development, and Interville, its owner developer and remainder owner.  Prior to depositing the strata plan which created Firenze, Interville had entered ...

Given its sometimes latent and often subterranean nature, environmental contamination and its associated legal liabilities can be challenging to foresee and may be overlooked by landlords and tenants in the process of entering a new lease. The Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act (EPEA), one of the key pieces of legislation in Alberta’s environmental ...

In a recent decision (Dubas v. The Owners of Strata Plan VR. 92, 2019 BCCA 196), the BC Court of Appeal further clarified the strata wind-up process and intent of the strata wind-up provisions in Part 16 of the Strata Property Act.  In this important decision, the Court of Appeal confirmed that a strata corporation could list its property for sale by way of a simple majority ...

Over the past year, the Province has made several changes to the Residential Tenancy Act (the “RTA”) to provide new protections and compensation for renters in British Columbia who might otherwise face eviction as a result of repair, renovation or demolition of residential properties.

In this blog post, we first provide a summary of the changes to the RTA which have come ...

On November 27, 2018, the British Columbia provincial government enacted Bill 45, the Budget Measures Implementation (Speculation and Vacancy Tax) Act (the "Act"). Unless otherwise exempted, all owners of residential property in designated regions in British Columbia are required to pay the speculation and vacancy tax ("SVT") for the calendar year 2018 and beyond. The ...

When borrowers seek financing for real estate ventures, whether the borrowed funds are to be used for the acquisition of property, the construction of a project or to refinance existing debt for a longer term hold, in many cases the lender will require security for the debt to include guarantees from companies related to the landowner/developer and/or from one or more ...