Legally Speaking Beware of Heritage or Archaeological Issues #564

REALTORS® must advise their clients on considering the potential presence of archaeological features before purchasing a property for development.

Legally Speaking Who Should Verify Zoning? #500

In the recent case Laidar Holdings Ltd. v. Lindt & Sprungli (Canada) Inc., 2018 BCSC 66, the real estate brokerage advising the tenant was…

Legally Speaking What’s Up (With the) Dock? #479

Waterfront properties with private docks are looking attractive at this time of the year, particularly with the weather we’ve been enjoying this summer…

Legally Speaking Strata Property Act Section 164 – Appeals for Relief Against Significantly Unfair Actions #353

Section 164 of the Strata Property Act gives a strata unit owner or tenant the right to challenge an action completed or threatened, or a decision of a strata council…

Legally Speaking Streamside Protection Regulation, Continued #338

Column 337 ended with formula descriptions for establishing streamside protection areas (also referred to as “leave strips”)…

Legally Speaking Resort Zoning; Condominiums – Bad Design Equals Refund; Property Disclosure Statement – Section 2M Doesn’t Include Past Infestations #335

Your dream is to buy a vacation home at a resort such as Whistler…

Legally Speaking Indian Land Development and Sale, Introduction To #328

Anyone involved for the first time in the sale of an interest in reserve land will find little that resembles the more usual sale of fee simple land with which we are familiar…

Legally Speaking Title Insurance – Part 1 of 3 #321

We in British Columbia take pride in our Land Title registration system because we can satisfy ourselves as to the state of title with a 60 second online search…

Legally Speaking Listing Contract – Cancellation and Relisting; Discharge – Ministry Of Highways – Attempt to Reserve Property for Future Highway Use #280

Column #279 discussed the cancellation of a listing, which cancelled the holdover clause and the practice of cancelling an MLSO listing of property, which has been on the market for a number of days to give…

Legally Speaking Best Efforts Condition Precedent #209

Whether a condition precedent falls within the “whim or fancy” or “option or offer” category of conditions, or within the category that requires purchasers to use their best efforts to satisfy the conditions…

Legally Speaking Soil Contaminated Sites [Continued] #139

A whole new growth industry is developing of scientists, engineers, law professors, lawyers, columnists, experts and others, around the pollution of the environment and the liability for doing so…

Legally Speaking Principal Residence – Exemption or Taxable Gain #131

Where the lands surrounding a principal residence exceed one acre, the excess area only falls within the principal residence exemption if the owner…

Legally Speaking Capital Gains Tax – Principal Residence #96

Following the death of a woman in 1982 who lived on a parcel of land of 6.09 acres, the Department of National Revenue assessed a taxable capital gain of $202,800.00 on the deemed disposition of the property…

Legally Speaking Salespersons’ Duty to Obtain Highest Price – Part 2 #75

You have listed for sale a house, to be described in the ad as a handyman’s special, which is located on a heavily-trafficked road in the middle of two blocks of mixed residential tenancy and low profit non-conforming…

Legally Speaking Principal Residence Exemptions #42

In the first case, the question was whether or not the sale of 9.3 acres made by the taxpayers under threat of expropriation by a municipality, leaving 7/10ths of an acre upon which the taxpayers’ house was situated…

Legally Speaking Lease for More Than Three Years – Illegal? #32

The Land Title Act requires a tenant with a long-term lease who wishes to register it, to follow the same procedure as does an owner who wants to divide his land into a number of parcels. Specifically, Section 73…

Legally Speaking Income Tax, Income or Capital Gain #31

The intention of the taxpayer as the determinative factor in whether one hundred per cent of the profit realized on the sale of property is taxed as income, or only fifty per cent as capital gain, is described in the…