Real Estate Litigation Articles

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca When a lawyer is presented with an unconditional but obviously defective agreement of purchase and sale by a client, does he or she have an obligation to try to negotiate an improvement to its terms? That was the question for the court to decide...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca Before closing the purchase of their home, Pierre Marcoux and Caroline Bougie discovered the City of Toronto building department had an open file on the house. They wanted the seller, Darlene Remlinger, to rectify the situation by having the...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca A discipline decision by the Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) earlier this year has established what may be a new disclosure standard for real estate agents dealing with basement apartments and land surveys. Back in 2006, Richmond Hill real...

Back in April, 2006, Walter and Shelley Cotton signed an agreement to buy their dream home in Brantford. After closing, the house turned out to be the worst nightmare they could have imagined, requiring them to spend more than $85,000 to bring it up to building code....

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca Emma and Henry (not their real names) live in a modest three-bedroom detached home near Bathurst and Lawrence. A few weeks ago, their laundry room experienced a minor sewage backup caused by a cracked sewage pipe under the front lawn. After the...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca Is the Ontario government about to auction off exclusive access to our land registration system to the highest bidder? Is it in the public interest to have a private monopoly control our land registration system? These are two of the questions...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca Is a religious object attached to the outside of a house or condominium a fixture, which remains with the home on a sale, or a chattel, which can be removed by a departing owner? That was the issue raised recently by a colleague, Gary...

The sad tale of the Glenlake Ave. driveway featured in the Star late last month has focussed public attention on the difference between the Land Registry and the Land Titles systems of property ownership. It has underscored yet again the fact that the single most...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca Down the street from my house, one of my neighbours has an old bathtub filled with earth sitting on the front lawn. In season, it contains flowering plants and is quite attractive. During the rest of the year, it just looks like an old bathtub....

Does a mortgage lender have the right to add the outstanding balance on your Visa card to the amount outstanding on your mortgage? That was the issue in a 2009 court case involving Toronto law firm Dale & Lessmann LLP and the Royal Bank of Canada. When Dick Soong...