r/RealEstateCanada

I love our house. The only thing is that it is a small house, 2 bed 1 bath. I want to convert the garage into a third bedroom maybe add a second story etc.
I love the area and I know it will appreciate in the future. We bought the “shittiest house in the best neighbourhood”. I know we will have to expand as I want an extra bedroom for when people visit and we need an office due to work from home jobs.

Hey, I’m Jess! I’m an Ontario realtor specializing in waterfront, rural and recreational properties across cottage country. I wanted to share what happened to me and my clients last week - whether you’re buying or selling, it may help you avoid a costly mistake.

What Happened

I was showing a cottage to buyer clients. They loved it - it had all the right vibes, the shoreline was perfect and it was listed under their budget. As I was wandering around the exterior, I spotted two capped steel pipes sticking out of the ground. I let out a huge sigh - because if you’ve been around the block enough times, you know this often means a buried oil tank.

My nemesis

I didn’t want to scare my clients mid-showing, so I kept it calm: “These make me think there may be a buried oil tank. I’ll find out for sure, but this might be a problem for financing and insurance. I’m going to work on this before we get emotionally attached.” Which of course we did get emotionally attached, because it was THE PERFECT COTTAGE. Lol.

How to spot a buried oil tank:

- pipes poking out of the ground, usually capped, often near the foundation

- copper lines running from the foundation into the ground

- a patch of ground that’s raised, sunken or oddly bare

- any mention of oil heat in the property’s history

The lender problem:

My clients had 25% down, so there was no CMHC insurance to contend with. Their mortgage broker contacted all their lenders, and none would finance the property with the tank in the ground. Her summary: it would have to be fully removed by a TSSA technician before closing, with a certificate of removal and an environmental test showing no contamination.

Here’s the part the surprised the other side. The listing agent pointed out that testing may not be legally requiring when a residential tank is removed unless there’s a spill, and that may be true. But lenders don’t care what the minimum legal requirement is - they care about their risk. Legally required and bank required are two different things.

What Ontario’s rules actually say:

Fuel storage in Ontario is governed by the TSSA under the Technical Standards and Safety Act, not by the building code. Under the Liquid Fuels Act Handling Code an underground tank must be removed within two years of going out of use, and within three years under the Fuel Oil Code. Leaving a tank in the ground past that requires a variance application plus an environmental assessment.

If oil escapes, the Environmental Protecation Act’s spill provisions apply. The person in control of the pollutant (read: the property owner) has to report a spill to the Ministry and the municipality right away. Contamination that reaches a watercourse can bring in not only the municipality but the conservation authority - on a waterfront property, this matters.

What is costs:

The first thing I did was contact two local contractors to a) confirm what I was looking at and b) figure out next steps (IE the math). Both TSSA contractors quoted $20,000 - $25,000 to dig up the tank and take the mandatory soil sample. If the sample came back contaminated, remediation was estimated between $30,000 - $100,000 depending on the severity. My other fear? My clients getting sued even after the remediation if a neighbour could prove damage to their property.

Insurance is the second hurdle:

Insurers often avoid properties with oil tanks, and standard policies may not cover lears without an extra endorsement. If you can’t get home insurance, you can’t get financing. Get your insurers answer in writing before you remove conditions.

The options I walked my clients through IRL:

1. the Seller removes the tank before closing at their cost, with a TSSA contractor’s letter confirming no contamination (or full remediation), plus a holdback in trust in case the soil comes back bad upon Buyer testing after closing. This was the safest option for the Buyer.
2. Middle road: Seller removes the tank before closing at their cost and provides the Buyer with the letter. No holdback. The risk to the Buyer if takes possession and finds further evidence of contamination, or contamination is found by the municipality, conservation authority or a neighbour, they are now financially responsible.
3. Buyer takes the tank as-is and handles it themselves. This is the riskiest, so the price has to reflect it.

The listing agent later asked whether my buyers would do a conditional offer, meaning the seller removes the tank and delivers a lender-acceptable certificate or the deal is void and the buyer gets their deposit back. If you go this route, the wording matters. I’d specify that the removal and sampling must be done by a TSSA-certified contractor and that the certificate matches exactly what the lender requires, with no grey area. The risk to buyers is mostly time and inspection costs, but that only works if the wording is airtight.

Advice for Buyers:

- walk the whole property, not just the house

- ask your realtor to look in the home’s heating history, the tanks age, and any removal paperwork

- call your mortgage broker before writing an offer, not after

- get insurance confirmation in writing

- make any tank condition-specific: who removes it, who certifies it, and what the certificate must say

- don’t let a beautiful cottage talk you out of doing your due diligence

Advice for Sellers with a buried oil tank:

My advice here is simple: deal with it before you list. Removal in a tidy, documented way costs way less than a deal that collapses mid-conditions, after you’ve already spent on updates, staging, and more. A removal certificate and clean soil results are a selling feature that widens your buyer pool to anyone with a mortgage, and it tells the market that they are dealing with considerate, honest people. And that’s who I want to buy a house from.

The outcome:

My clients decided to hit pause, but I’ll keep you posted!

Happy to answer any questions in the comments, or send me a DM.

Everyone talks about interest rates dropping or holding steady but no one is talking about what rising maintenance fees are doing to condo values in the 416.

​Seeing so many 10 to 15 year old buildings where monthly fees are creeping past $1 or even $1.20 a square foot. when a 2 bed condo has a $1100 monthly maintenance fee on top of property tax it completely kills the buyers borrowing power. A buyer could literally afford an extra $150k in mortgage debt for what that monthly fee costs.

​It feels like older buildings with bad reserve funds are going to see massive price corrections regardless of where interest rates go. Are you seeing buyers straight up walk away from listings as soon as they see the status certificate reserve numbers?

Have asked agent three times to write an offer for x amount on vacant land with a condition we pay for a perc test and get satisfactory results before we close the deal. She won't write it. Keeps naking excuses. Any idea why? Ideas on work around? Would like to at least hope for an acceptable counter offer. Land on the market for 165 days so far.

Edit to add thanks to people here I have a new agent. Offer will be made to at least open a discussion and find out where both parties are happy.

Hey everyone, looking for some perspective or sanity checks from anyone who’s navigated last-minute mortgage underwriting chaos.

My fiance and I bought a freehold townhouse in the GTA for ~$900k. We have over 22% down ($200k+ liquid), $171k combined gross annual income, zero debt, and 800+ credit scores each. Our home inspection already went through completely clean, and we got our status certificate on Friday evening with that deadline being Wednesday at 11:59pm. Our condition of financing expires tomorrow (Monday) at 11:59pm.

Everything was on track with Scotiabank for a 3-year fixed, until Friday afternoon when things went sideways. Scotia’s underwriter went to pull my credit bureau, and the system threw an error. I called TransUnion directly at 3pm Friday, and the rep told me I have a split file. Apparently, my identity is fragmented into two accounts:

• Account 1: Has my old address and correct SIN, but my birth month is literally wrong (says July instead of August).
• Account 2: Has my current address and correct birth date, but is missing my SIN entirely.

TransUnion said they opened an urgent rush case to merge both profiles, but stated it takes 3 business days. Scotia refused to touch the file without the TransUnion report and basically left us hanging going into the weekend.

Our broker acted fast and submitted us to Meridian CU on Friday evening. Rate is actually better: 4.49% 3yr fixed (Scotia was 4.59%). So we're told by our broker that Meridian uses Equifax, not TransUnion. My broker pulled my Equifax report and it is 100% unified, zero errors, and clean credit score.

I packaged every single paper trail document (T4s, paystubs, 90-day statements across all accounts, gift letters, etc.) into a drive so the underwriter has the full file at 9am Monday. My broker is flagging it as an "urgent same-day expiry" with his BRM.

The reason we are sweating buckets is because can Meridian realistically pull off an initial conditional approval and automated valuation (AVM) between 9am and 5pm Monday? Similar comps in the complex sold recently between $885k and $1M, so property valuation shouldn't be an issue, but the 1-day turnaround is tight. On Friday, after hearing the TransUnion news, our realtor floated a 48hr extension to the listing agent just to see. The listing agent said "the sellers probably won't extend." (Probably trying to pressure us, but who knows).

Questions for you guys:

1. Has anyone had Meridian Broker Services turn around an AVM and conditional approval in ~6-8 hours on an escalated file?
2. If Meridian gives us a conditional approval and passes the AVM by late Monday afternoon, but still needs Tuesday to audit all the 90-day bank statements, would you risk waiving clean or force an amendment extension on the seller?
3. Anyone ever dealt with a TransUnion split-file merge? Did their "3 business day rush" actually happen faster, or did it drag out?
4. What the hell would you guys do in my shoes? I'm confident we can get a mortgage given our circumstances, but these unknowns are stressing us out.

Appreciate any advice or experiences. Trying to keep my blood pressure down until Monday morning.

Hi Team,

1st time homebuyer here; and am feeling clueless. Need some guidance regarding the purchase of a CondoTown house for my family of 4. This is an end unit so it has extra windows, and brick/block exterior cladding (i'm new so I appologize if i'm not getting the terminology correct).

I had asked for the status certificate and other condo docs; and noticed that as an Owner, I would be responsible for the front/rear doors, garage doors, window frames/glass, exterior painting, exterior light fixtures, exterior cladding, front/rear concrete, driveways, parking spaces, and any other exterior elements including walkways and landscaping situated between the common element road and my unit.

The condo townhouse fees is $404/month at the moment, and it appears that the condo corp. recently added this in their amendments/documentation etc. The condo townhouse is approx. 23 years old.

I'm not sure if I’ve phrased my question correctly, but are these responsibilities normal for a condo townhouse owner. My guess here is that they've done it as a way to lower condo fees, vs. the alternative which would increase the condo fees for everyone.

Need some guidance here, is this something to worry about, or is this normal or a new trend.

Any help/guidance would be highly appreciated.

I know rules of thumb for this have shifted but what HHI would you be comfortable with a 1.5mil, 1mil, 750k, 500k mortgage? Hoping to buy in 10 years. Currently plan on having 3 children over those years before getting the house.

I have heard of 2 rules of thumb for home buying.
1)do not allow purchase price to exceed 3x gross HHI
2)do not allow total housing cost to exceed 50% HHI

We like to browse for fun right now and see what we like and what we don’t like. Trying to think of what size of home to be realistic about. Also unsure what to budget for maintenance to try to calculate the 2nd rule of thumb above.

Another rule of thumb for kids I have heard is to budget or expect 1200/child for groceries/childcare/sports/school etc once they are school age. Is this conservative or too low in today’s economy

First-time home buyer looking for advice

I purchased a pre-construction condo at Design District by Emblem in Hamilton, ON for $740,000. It’s a mid-floor, 2 bed/2 bath unit, approx. 650 sq. ft.
With the current condo market, I’m worried the appraisal will come in significantly lower than my purchase price.

Has anyone recently had an appraisal or sold a similar unit in this area? Would you close and hold, or consider walking away and taking the loss?

Also interested in hearing from anyone who has defaulted on a pre-construction condo in Ontario and what the financial/legal outcome was.