Real Estate Litigation Articles

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca Last month I received an email from a firm billing itself as a “very successful real estate investment firm that invests heavily in something called rent-to-own.” The e-mail offered several “hot deals” that were “going fast.” Three were on...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca One of the biggest challenges facing the new home industry today is the problem of illegal construction and sale of houses. In Ontario, it is illegal for a homebuilder to enter into an agreement of purchase and sale or a construction contract...

The town of Port Hope, featured two weeks ago in a Saturday Star story on the impact of low-level nuclear contamination affecting local homeowners, is not the only Ontario municipality saddled with the burden of widespread soil contamination. The community of Cartier...

An Ontario court has found a real estate agent partially liable in damages for failing to review a home inspector’s report carefully with his purchaser client. The court found that the agent’s duty did not end with the recommendation that the purchaser obtain a home...

If there ever was any doubt about the risks to sellers and real estate agents of using the Seller Property Information Statement (SPIS), a decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal earlier this month would seem to have put them to rest once and for all. In the case of...

Does a seller have an obligation to disclose to a purchaser with young children the fact that a person convicted of child pornography lives across the street? That was the issue in a court case which came before Justice Alexandra Hoy in March of this year. The...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca The governing bodies of the notary and legal professions in Quebec have launched a lawsuit against several title insurance companies over the preparation and registration of mortgages and discharges of mortgages on real estate in the province....

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca In my column on April 2, I wrote about a study by Halifax Home Insurance in the U.K. which reported that more than 360,000 Britons, or one in 10 people, moved home because of irritating neighbours. I expressed my doubts that that statistic would...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca At any given time, at least some of the courts in Ontario are occupied with disputes between neighbours. Based on the current law reports that come across my desk, these disputes usually involve noise, boundary disputes, weeds, garbage, animals,...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca A Toronto-area builder has filed a notice of appeal after losing two small claims court cases to new condominium buyers who sued to recover thousands of dollars in “unreal” closing charges. The successful plaintiffs were among as many as 244...