The Real Estate Hiccups

As a real estate sales professional, your services present incredible value to the clients you serve. Representing a client in a real estate transaction is a process that involves due diligence and precision. When unexpected occurrences happen on deals, you may experience what some refer to as a hiccup, meaning you can recover, while others may refer to the deal having exploded - meaning there is no way to recover the deal. Either way you look at it, even a hiccup in a deal can lead to great expense – both monetarily and time wise.

The sooner that you can identify potential issues, the more that you can mitigate time and expense wasted.

Sometimes when representing a client, unexpected information can come up, like tax a lien for example. Check out this example:

• Perhaps you have taken on a new listing and the seller doesn’t even realize that CRA has registered a lien on their home in connection with an unpaid tax debt.
• This leads you to do some further investigation so you request a Parcel Register* to see if in fact your client does have a lien registered. The Parcel Register* confirms that yes, only a week prior to the client engaging you to sell their home, CRA did register a lien on the home.
• You report back to your client and they are in a complete state of shock. They had no idea that a lien was registered or the amount that they owed to CRA, or who at CRA to contact, so they ask you for help.
• You then go on to use the Instrument Number associated to the lien in the Parcel Register*, and request the instrument image.
• The instrument image saves you and your client precious time because it provides all the details your client needs to get to the bottom of the issue of the unexpected lien. This information includes the direct contact information for who at CRA registered the lien.
• You are able to relay that information back to your client and they contact CRA.
• CRA agrees to lift the lien on the condition that a lump sum payment is made towards the tax debt.

We can go on and on with stories like this that we hear from real estate sales professionals all the time. What are some of the buzz words in these examples: requested a Parcel Register*, obtained an instrument image, requested a condo status certificate, etc… As a real estate sales professional you are only as good at your job as the tools you have at your disposal. In this day and age you can’t just take someone’s word for something anymore and it is critical to perform checks and balances to ensure that there are no potential hiccups or explosions waiting to bring your deal down.

For more about Parcel Registers* or Condo Status Certificates please visit www.geowarehouse.ca today.

*An official product of the Ontario government pursuant to provincial land registration statutes.