Lawyers
Your Agent can provide you with a list of Lawyers that specialize in Real Estate or you can go the Law Society Referral Service web site which will give you a list of lawyers to chose from in your Community. Depending on the type of property you’d like to purchase, you may wish to make your offer conditional upon your lawyer finding everything satisfactory. The Real Estate lawyer performs many tasks including ordering property tax statements, registering the deed, searching the property title, managing the transfer of funds between trust accounts, arranging title insurance and providing other legal advice such as wills and estate planning.
When purchasing a resale home, about 2 weeks prior to the closing date, your lawyer will search the land registry records to determine whether there are any liens, encumbrance or legal judgements registered against the property. If there is then this gives the lawyers time to discharge any liens prior to closing
It’s very important to have a lawyer review the offer when purchasing a new home or Condo since the offers are completed on builder forms and may have clauses and terms that tend to favour the builder. When purchasing a new Condo you should have your lawyer carefully review the interim occupancy fees/costs and how they’re calculated. Interim occupancy fees are an estimate of the property taxes, interest on the mortgage amount and maintenance fees paid by the Buyer before the condo is legally registered. It can take 4-6 months after an owner has moved into the building before it’s legally registered.
