The Importance of Parcel Registers – A $7,000.00 Learning Experience

The Parcel Register search is relied upon for real estate transactions to learn important information about a property, such as ownership and encumbrances. The real estate lawyer will request a parcel register prior to closing because it currently validates:

• Who owns the property
• The type of ownership
• When the property was purchased
• Value of the transfer
• Registered amount of the mortgage
• Any undischarged mortgages registered against the property
• Any liens against the property - property tax, condo liens, income tax, etc.  

The Parcel Register is one of the first property related searches that real estate sales professionals utilise when conversing with their clients.  This will reduce your expenditure in both time and money, and allow for these resources to be allocated elsewhere. For instance, the profit of the sale may be hindered when the necessary information is not disclosed by the client. With the Parcel Register search you will be able to obtain the important information. This will also allow you to avoid the potential risks, which can be detrimental to your profit when a deal has closed.   

A lien or undisclosed mortgage can result in a deal not closing, or the deal will close but there may not be enough equity to cover commission. All things considered, it is a nominal expense to use a Parcel Register to ensure that your deal closes safely.

In a LinkedIn Group that we sponsor, a participant highlighted a very common occurrence that we can learn from: 

A real estate sales professional had a client who had to perform renovations on a property before they could list it - the cost of the renovations was about $7,000. The real estate sales professional extended a loan to the client to pay for the renovations. When the property was sold, it came to light that there were 3 mortgages registered against the property. Once the final balances were sent to the lawyer, there was no equity left to pay back the loan to the real estate sales professional. Fortunately, there was enough equity to pay the commission, which was just slightly less than $7,000.  

This clearly illustrates the importance of obtaining a Parcel Register because if the information was available, the loss could have been avoided.  

Among several other tools provided by GeoWarehouse, we encourage you to utilise the Parcel Register search for your benefit.  

For more information about GeoWarehouse or a Parcel Register please visit www.geowarehouse.ca or feel free to watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCnO80_bRvM about how to request a Parcel Register.