Real Estate Litigation Articles

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca Since the start of 2020, every new purchase agreement for a pre-construction residential condominium is required to have attached to it an information sheet highlighting important issues that are part of a pre-construction transaction. The...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca One of the questions I’m frequently asked by home sellers is what issues they must disclose during the negotiation of a sale agreement. Any discussion of a seller’s disclosure obligation begins with the doctrine of caveat emptor: buyer beware....

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca How does an interested buyer know if a home’s basement apartment is legal? And what information about basement apartments must real estate agents provide to buyers? Mohamed came to my office last month with an agreement to purchase a two-unit...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca This past year’s GTA real estate market may become known as the year of aborted transactions. Speaking to hundreds of real estate lawyers, both in person and online at a Law Society of Ontario seminar last month, Toronto lawyer Harry Herskowitz...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca What’s better for Ontario condominiums and their owners: electronic proxies or electronic voting? And what’s the difference? I recently wrote about solving the problem of condo owner apathy to meetings, where their votes are needed, by...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca I am regularly surprised at how frequently a land survey is viewed as unnecessary when it could be considered the single most important document in a real estate transaction. A survey was the focus of a court decision released last month in...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca An easy solution to the problem of owner apathy in condominium buildings, and a simple way to encourage interest and participation, is to introduce electronic voting. Back in November, 2017, the Condominium Act was amended to allow electronic...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca If the city of Toronto was serious about tackling the housing shortage, why would it charge Toronto homeowners $300,000 to legalize three bachelor apartments in their house? Patrick and Susan own a three-storey home in central Toronto. In 2001,...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca When homebuyers discover before closing that the sellers are involved in boundary litigation with their neighbours, are they obliged to close the deal? And when buyers discover that the land being purchased is smaller on paper than it appears on...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca There’s nothing like having your property burn to the ground to focus your attention on the need for good property insurance. Three years ago, my business partners Ben and Jill, and my wife Dorothy and I, purchased a $230,000 triplex in a small...