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Title Bombshells: Part 2
In a recent email we discussed a situation where a condominium was being sold with one titled parking space. A review of the unit title and parking space title showed that the unit title had one name on it and the parking space title had three names! With one of the three deceased, it was a big problem.
Somehow, parking titles create problems. I’m not sure why, but they do. Some time ago a client called me to say he was reviewing his recently received tax assessment notice for his condo unit and noticed that he did not have an assessment notice for his titled parking space.
He called the City of Edmonton to ask why he didn't get an assessment notice for the parking space. To his great surprise the City said "you don't own that unit anymore, it belongs to someone else".
Since my client has lived in the condominium unit for eight years, parked in that same titled parking space, and had definitely not sold the parking space, this was a shocker!
After a lot of investigation, it turned out that a bank was foreclosing on a living unit in the building and the parking space for the foreclosed unit was right beside his parking space. The two parking titles had consecutive unit numbers, 113 and 114. When the foreclosed property transfers of land went to the Land Titles office for registration, Land Titles made a mistake and transferred my clients 114 space instead of the foreclosed 113 space.
This is fixable because Land Titles will correct their mistake and make sure everyone has the right parking space title. BUT, getting to this point took a bunch of time.
- We had to dig around to find out why there was no tax assessment notice for the parking title.
- We had to conduct a bunch of research to figure out what happened.
- We then to deal with Land Titles, and getting the error corrected took about five weeks.
To paraphrase my comments from 'Title Bombshells: Part 1':
I believe it's standard practice for all Realtors to pull a title at some point in the process. The trick is to give that title a good review. If your review raises any issues or questions, some immediate action may be required. You may not know how to solve the issue, answer the question or what action to take, but that doesn't matter. Start digging and ask questions.
If you were the listing Realtor your practice is likely to pull title as part of the listing process. If your clients had not caught this issue from reviewing their tax assessments, your first question/ observation should be "I see your name is not on the parking title?".
That would have started the conversation. The parking title problem needs to be solved before your client can sell the property. My client took five weeks to solve. Doing that early title review and at least finding the problem is part of your job as a listing realtor. You don't have to solve the problem but you do have to notice it.
Protect yourself.
Cheers,
Barry
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