Which lot is which?
I have personal experience of a realtor placing his for sale sign on the wrong lot and showing it to prospective buyers. First I noticed that two realtors showed photos of the same lot on their realtor.ca listings and both stated there was a cleared building site. The Geographic Information System (GIS) for the area, however, showed they were two different lots – one with a building site and one still fully forested.
When I went to view the the lot I noticed the other realtor’s sign laying in the ditch in front of the lot I was going to see – the one with the build site. So, I got really suspicious and began a search for pins and found that the realtor not only had the sign in front of the wrong lot, he had a description of the wrong lot. The realtor’s lot was 2 away and still fully forested, with no building site and a creek running through it.
I explained the mistake to the realtor and he said that it is the other realtor who has his sign in front of the wrong lot. I explained that I am a BC Land Surveyor, that I went onto the lot, personally checked the lot number on the property corners and found that he is the one selling the wrong lot.
So, imagine if he sold that lot, the wrong lot, to someone who started to build on it without first getting a survey to determine exactly where the lot is. My wife and I didn’t purchase either of the lots.
These mixups have happened many times in Canada for property and houses. See the paper prepared by Bob Aaron or Aaron & Aaron, Toronto, for the Law Society of Upper Canada Real Estate Summit in April 2015 and adapted for a webinar for the Association of Ontario Land Surveyors to read examples or real estate mixups: http://www.aols.org/sites/default/files/SURVEYS%20AOLS%20WEBINAR%20AUGUST%2012%202O15.pdf