Buy the parking stall, too!

When selling or buying a resale condominium apartment home, it is possible to forget all about a "titled" parking stall or a "titled" storage locker. Read on for a cautionary tale, and to learn how to avoid a serious real estate predicament, be you a condo seller or buyer, or a Realtor or a lawyer representing either of those parties.

In the case at hand, a real estate sale collapsed fully a month after possession day, as the seller could not transfer ownership of the parking stall that went with the condo apartment that my clients had agreed to buy. The problem was that the seller had not bought the titled parking stall some years ago when HE was the buyer. Now the owner of that titled little property in the building's parkade is long gone. Not only has the current seller lost the sale of his property but, as well, he may face the expense of a court order to obtain ownership, in order to be able to sell the suite and the stall together. That process could take months.

The opportunity for such confusion arises because parking stalls and even storage lockers can be surveyed and titled property, just as the condominium apartment itself is titled property. Just because an owner doesn't have a copy of the title for a parking stall or a locker doesn't mean one or both don't exist, which is the issue that a seller's Realtor should zero in on. The only way to know is to obtain a copy of the Condominium Plan from the Land Titles office (only $3!), and to see whether the building's parking and storage are titled.

In some cases, even more diligence is required. Apartment condo buildings can have both titled stalls and lockers, and additional assigned common-property parking stalls and storage lockers. Realtors are advised to have sellers actually show them their parking and storage, and to cross-reference that to the Condominium Plan while standing right there in the parkade, or in the basement locker area. In fact, all current owners who do not have a title on file for their parking and/or locker are well advised to check the building's Condo Plan. If either one is titled property, and if you didn't buy it when you bought your suite, it's etter to find that out now rather than five or 10 years from now when you need to sell.

Here's a variation on this theme. There are buildings that have large suites that were created by unifying two smaller ones. Such a condominium apartment home may have been professionally renovated, leaving no visible clue that it was once two suites. The second apartment door and suite number are long gone. The only place to see what legally exists is by looking at the Condominium Plan. The seller may forget to mention that he pays two property tax bills each year. Heck, it might be the estate dealing with the sale, and the kids never even knew that grandma's place started out as two suites. They might only find one property title when they look, or may simply stop looking when they find one. How can they know there are two?

Obviously, Realtors working in condominium real estate should always be referring to the Condominium Plan when listing properties for sale. The Realtor should also be confirming that the sellers actually own all the titled properties they are using, and which they presume that they own. The buyer or their Realtor or lawyer can also ask probing questions, but none of those parties are on site with the seller. The bottom line: you can't know what's titled, nor how many titles there are, without looking at the Condominium Plan, and you can't know who owns each and every title without looking at all of those, as well.