In the process of buying and selling a Markham home, what needs to be done and what is most important can get confusing, especially for first-time buyers. You hope that your real estate professional and/or lawyer will handle all of the mind-numbing paperwork and let you just marvel at homes and then hand over your money. When making a purchase or sale as large as this, it is up to you to be prepared and informed. Your realtor can really only do so much for you. A property survey is a very important part of the home buying transaction and here’s why.
Your property survey details exactly what property you own
A property survey will show you the boundaries of your property and indicates lot size and gives a description of the property. This includes the right-of-ways, which are the rights of others to access some area of the property. For example, in the cases of:
· Hydro
· Telephone company
· Shared laneways
· Shared driveways
Easements are another detail listed on a property survey. Easements are a right of access to a property that is very difficult to remove. This can include a fence on your property or outside your property line.
Knowing exactly what easements, right-of-ways and other details are part of your property is very important for any homeowner and the only way to know this is with an updated survey.
You may want to make changes to the property
If you are buying the property considering renovations or adding a pool, a deck or even a fence, you may very well need the survey on hand to do so. Having an updated survey at the time of purchase of the property ensures you don’t run into any sort of surprise and have your dreams of changing the home or adding to it crushed.
The property may be more (or less) than you think
Over time, buildings are removed and added from a property and changes are made. Unfortunately for some, if the changes aren’t made using an up-to-date survey, the property may not be as what it seems. There have been multiple cases of buyers purchasing homes that were partially on another person’s property or even owned by the township. Those buyers would have been protected by ordering a new survey before closing to ensure what they were buying was actually what they were paying for.
Moral of the story
When a home is built, the property survey is given to the first owner of the property. With older homes and with some newer homes, that original survey may have been lost and be difficult to get. The best way to remedy this is to order your own up-to-date survey. If you want to talk more about surveys and buying a home in Markham, let me know how I can help.
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