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Does the "Foreign Buyer Ban" apply to Cape Breton?
The short answer is: Yes - a bit.
Starting on January 1, 2023, non-Canadians are prohibited from buying residential property for a period of two years under an act called the Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act.
A "non-Canadian" is someone who is neither a citizen nor a non-resident or a corporation without sufficient Canadian control. The ban was recently amended to permit temporary residents to purchase property if they have sufficient presence in Canada, they are only buying one property, and the property is being purchased for under $500,000.
There are other exemptions; if, for example, a non-Canadian is inheriting Canadian property or if the property is a gift they are not subject to the ban.
There are also exemptions that apply to multi-unit dwellings that are outside the scope of this article.
One of the most difficult to define exemptions is for rural property and vacant land.
Rural Property.
The Foreign Buyer Ban applies to residential property, but does not include residential properties that are outside of census metropolitan areas or census agglomeration areas. What are those? A census metropolitan area, also known as a CMA, is a large city, like Toronto or Vancouver. A census agglomeration area, also known as a CA, is a grouping of communities centered around a core with a population of at least 10,000 people. Does that include Cape Breton? Yes, partially. Cape Breton is it's own CA, but the Cape Breton CA does not include all of Cape Breton Island. The map below shows the Cape Breton CA geographical area.
Source: Statistics Canada
As you can see, the area is large and includes many areas that we would consider "rural", such as Northside East Bay. However, all areas inside the blue line are considered part of the Cape Breton CA zone and are subject to the ban (as long as the other exemptions don't apply). Anything outside the blue line on the island is not subject to the ban.
The only other CMA and CA zones in Nova Scotia are Halifax, Truro, New Glasgow, and Kentville.
Vacant Land.
The Foregin Buyer Ban applies to residential property. Whether or not a property is "residential" is a question of zoning, not whether or not it has a house on it. The ban specifically exempts rural property that is zoned residential or mixed use, whether not it is in a CA or not. That means a non-Canadian can buy vacant land that is zoned residential or mixed use inside the Cape Breton CA zone.
Each property is different and each person's situation is different. If you have a question about whether or not the Foreign Buyer Ban applies to your transaction, we encourage you to contact one of our knowledgeable real estate lawyers.
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| This post was written by Anna Manley. If you'd like to contact Anna you can send her an email: anna@manleylaw.ca |
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Internet & Privacy
Everybody Pwned ‘;-- : The Pitfalls of Breach Ubiquity and the Prospects of Bill C-11
February 16, 2021There are changes coming to the information security landscape in Canada.
Bill C-11 was tabled in the House of Commons on December 2, 2020. It's long name: "An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act and the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts". This proposed legislation comes at a time when Canadian are relying more and more on electronic communication.
Why should you care?
Let's try a little experiment. Go here...
Put your most commonly used email in.
Not willing to put your email in to a random internet site recommended by some random woman you just met over the internet?
I get that.
Let’s use my two main email addresses.
personal email - No breaches reported
work email - Oh oh! - pwned! 1 breach.
NOTE: I was married in 2015 and being ever the romantic I changed my last name to match my spouse. This explains the no breaches on my personal email. My previous personal email had been involved in 7 breaches.
The breach my work email with was discovered by two security researchers. They found an unprotected server belonging to People Data Labs holding 1.2 billion records of personal information (email address, phone numbers, social media profiles, job history data). It’s unclear whether this information came from a breach or scrape (when someone use credentials that have been compromised to download all the information off of a site OR download all public information that was listed at public that perhaps should not have been).
People Data Labs is an aggregator - they collect publicly facing or available information and resell access to that information. Information has more meaning and value when it’s all put together.
Do I feel violated? … not really. Most of the information was publicly available - none of it was intensely personal (the closest thing to private information would have been social media profiles - but that’s just photos of cats so no biggy - right?).
This breach was much smaller than Collection #1. In January 2019, a large collection of credential stuffing lists (combinations of email addresses and passwords used to hijack accounts on other services) was discovered being distributed on a popular hacking forum. The data contained almost 2.7 billion records including 773 million unique email addresses alongside passwords those addresses had used on other breached services.
Collection #1 and the breach my information was involved in are part of a concerning trend of Mega Breaches - which I define loosely as breaches that tend to dwarf previous breaches - either because the single breach was very large or it was a breach of aggregated sources. Data aggregators are in the business of collecting data and reselling it in large meaningful chunks that would tend to identify an individual in a more personal way than the individual pieces of information would. When they are breached there are significant cascading effects to information security.
For example, if I used my work email to sign up for an online dating app and it was compromised and this was crossed with my scrapped LinkedIn profile this could provide nefarious individuals with enough information to compromise me or my business using a spear-phishing attack.
(Although we've trained on this issue so much, every time my staff gets a spear-phishing email they report it to me with a great deal of smug satisfaction.)
Mega Breach is a problematic working definition because it’s relative. This means there is an ever growing standard for what constitutes a “really bad” security breach.
In relative measures, context is everything - so let’s go back to “The First Hack”.
This is magician and inventor, Nevil Maskelyne. He disrupted John Ambrose Fleming's public demonstration of Guglielmo Marconi's (purportedly secure) wireless telegraphy technology, sending insulting Morse code messages through the auditorium's projector. The messages Nevil sent were “Rats” and “humorous verses” - which, based on the rivalry between the two men, may have been obscene. One incident - it was extremely scandalous and we are still talking about it. At least right now.
haveibeenpwned.com has a list of pwned websites. This is a list of websites that have been hacked (as in completely taken over or otherwise compromised by active agents). It contains hundred of entries. This list doesn’t even include those companies who have had their data accessed or stolen. The first hack was a scandal. Now we just collect statistics.
Let’s talk about fatigue. Not enitrely dissimilar from zoom fatigue. Breach Fatigue is general exhaustion on the part of the consumer as a result of the constant barrage of data breaches reported in the news. Breach Fatigue is particularly troubling given that the consequences of breaches have gone far beyond a few saucy messages between old timey chaps.
Consider this: I have two children under three.
I opted for the epidural. Which means I was hooked up to a drug infusion pump. One of these guys...
An epidural is generally a fentanyl drip. The interesting thing is that the drugs are locked up, but the device is left unattended and unlocked before the drugs are put into it… and it has an open interface. The model used for my drip had a handle little USB port. Devices similar to this one were found to be vulnerable to remote code execution and man-in-the-middle attacks. My spouse, who knows about these things, felt it was a good time to talk to my anaesthetist about device security. Under the current provisions of the criminal code, someone simply accessing the device would be a crime. Prior to the change, they would have to cause harm.
This year we saw the first reported death from a cyber attack. A hospital in Dusseldorf, Germany was the subject to a ransomware attack. Systems at the hospital were crashed and the hospital was forced to turn away patients. A woman with a life-threatening condition was sent to a hospital 20 miles away. She died from treatment delays.
Breach fatigue can settle in because people don’t really understand how far reaching the consequences are.
Attacks happen because of the size of the technology stack (the stack is all the programs that work together to deliver a service). They aren’t kept up to date all the way down from a security perspective… and it may even be impossible to keep them up to date because they’ve become so big.
This causes the threat envelope to grow and once vulnerability is discovered it can be deployed widely.
Above is an example from the construction sector (low tech, right?). All these technologies use dozens or more of individual stacks and bugs likely exist everywhere.
There is also the issue of information delay and the 24 hour news cycle. It can take years to discover the extent of a breach. The LinkedIn breach occurred in 2012, but we only discovered its full extent in 2016. By then people had simply moved on.
On November 1, 2018 mandatory breach reporting under PIPEDA began. In the 2019-2020 Report to Parliament, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada reported:
341 - Data breach reports received under the Privacy Act678 - Data breach reports received under PIPEDA (The highest percentages of which were in the finance, telecommunications, and retail/sales sectors)
Even on an individual level, people have started to consider hacking a more serious threat - while simultaneously suffering from breach fatigue and a general apathy about their own personal security.
I asked my long suffering IT infrastructure engineer if he could give me updated stats on attacks to my firm’s network.
- We receive an attack or scan every 60 seconds.
- There are 5-6 credible concerning flags per week.
- We’ve stopped approximately 15 credible ransom ware attempts in the past three years.
- We stopped 4 spear-phishing attacks that would have resulted in potential breach.
Go ask your IT people for these statistics - they should be able to give them to you.
We're a small shop of a few lawyers and support staff - but we're still a target.
Scary. Stuff.
Enter, the government.
Innovation Minister, Navdeep Bains, is talking about sweeping changes to privacy legislation in Canada in the form of Bill C-11. I had read about the Mandate Minister Bains had received and I figured something interesting was coming. The mandate specifically mentioned “proactive data security requirements”.
One of the big changes is the fines. If the bill passes, companies could face fines of up to five per cent of global revenue or $25 million — whichever is greater — for the most serious offences. Bains said the legislation provides for the heaviest fines among the G7 nations' privacy laws. Bains says the fines will ensure accountability.
The proposed legislation also would give the federal privacy commissioner order-making powers. Think we can all agree that’s a good thing. This power would including the ability to force an organization to comply and to order a company to stop collecting data or using personal information.
For our purposes today, the relevant section to what we’re talking about here is the section regarding Security Safeguards (s. 57). Check it out:
s.57(1) Security Safeguards(1) An organization must protect personal information through physical, organizational and technological security safeguards. The level of protection provided by those safeguards must be proportionate to the sensitivity of the information.[...](3) The security safeguards must protect personal information against, among other things, loss, theft and unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use and modification.
The amendment creates a duty to protect. An ACTIVE duty to protect. The amendment actively requires an organization to protect user’s data through physical, organizational, and technological security. This means you need the fort mentality to apply to your technology, your building, and your internal office policies.
And the protections must be robust enough to protect personal information against loss, theft, OR access. To put this in context, PIPEDA (s.10.1(1)) currently requires reporting to the Commissioner and notification to the individual where there was a real risk of significant harm to the individual, but it does not mention any requirement for security safeguards to be in place.
This legislation is entering a theatre where information security pros aren't exactly listened to. I’ve spoken to groups of information security professionals… they tell me horror stories about vulnerability disclosure…
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| Credit: pentestpartners.com/security-blog |
This Bingo card apparently sums it up. To extend the game analogy, it's like playing monopoly with only three playing pieces: an ostrich, a bull, and a cricket.
Vulnerability disclosure is where a person discovers a security vulnerability and reports it (or not) to the organization. The organization’s reactions generally range from absolute rage to frightening apathy.
The active duty to protect information will *hopefully* change this because companies will be required to pay attention to reported vulnerabilities in order to comply with the new privacy measures.
The active duty to protect is interesting (even encouraging), but how does will it survive in the wild?
I see three immediate challenges:
(1) Bill C-11 doesn’t set a standard or provide definitions for adequate security safeguards. Who gets to create the definition?
The Privacy Commissioner? The industry? The courts? - so far it’s been the courts and the industry - we may be confusing things by adding another player. Everybody seems to know what should happen (information should be protected), but the rapid pace of technological change makes them also very reluctant to set a standard or provide guidance that is specific enough to be helpful.
(2) There is a significant spread between large organizations with significant IT infrastructure and smaller organizations - all of whom will be held to the same standard. Information security solutions like what I have in place aren’t feasible for the average business owner. In this way additional guidance would be essential in making sure people knew what they were supposed to do.
(3) The other challenge is that people are of two minds. As I mentioned before people are both exhausted by the ubiquity of breaches, but also extremely protective of their privacy. The former means people will be less likely to take proactive measures to protect themselves, and the latter means governments will be expected to take an increasingly involved role in protecting privacy, possibly through legislative requirements.
In my opinion, neither of these groups are the appropriate party to make the decisions about what is secure enough and how to best protect data - that should be left to security and privacy professions.
This is a photo of a Commodore 64 - comically old technology - it came out in 1982. That was only 38 years ago.
Lawyers have been around since 750 BC - 2,750 years. The medical profession has been around for a similar amount of time. Insert lawyer joke here.
Computer related professions are in their infancy, but given the pace of technological change, we need to give them a lot more credit so they can guide us to actual practical solutions for protecting privacy.
** Credit to Troy Hunt and his excellent work on haveibeenpwned.com for much of the information in this post and my related talk **
Thanks, as always, to our long suffering IT person who, although nameless, is our steadfast sentry.
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| This post was written by Anna Manley. If you'd like to contact Anna you can send her an email: anna@manleylaw.ca |
On March 27th, the Federal Government announced additional measures to help citizens and businesses cope with the economic impact of COVID-19; these measures included a 75% wage subsidy and loans for small/medium enterprises. On that same day, the Nova Scotia government also announced additional measures put in place under the Emergency Management Act. Among these additional measures was an order prohibiting landlords of retail or commercial spaces from evicting tenants or seizing and selling tenant belongings to cover unpaid rent.
Here's the order:
Punishment for failure to comply with this order could result in fines between $500 and $10,000 for individuals and up to $100,000 for companies.
What does this mean?
Commercial leases have two main remedies when rent is unpaid:
This order does not apply to all tenants. If a tenant is an office space, for example, a landlord can still take advantage of the Notice to Quit and Distress for Rent remedies. The order only prevents these remedies from being used against tenants who are engaged in the following businesses:
Rent Deferral Support Program
The Nova Scotia government has also put in place a Rent Deferral Support Program aimed at helping landlords recoup some of their losses associated with the order. Support is available for up to $15,000 per tenant - up to a maximum of $50,000. The important thing to understand is that this is an indemnity, meaning you're not entitled to the $15,000 if you defer rent collection. You can only apply for the government to repay you for actual losses in the amount of $50,000 (maximum).
For example, if you sign an rent deferral agreement with a tenant and they fail to repay the rent as required under that rent deferral agreement, you can apply to this program to recoup the rent lost from that tenant for the period of time between April 1st and July 1st.
The criteria for qualifying includes having entered into a rent deferral agreement before April 1, 2020. This rent deferral agreement must cover the period of time between April 1, 2020 and July 1, 2020. The Rent Deferral Agreements do not need to forgive the rent payable between April and July - the payments are deferred. The agreement must include provisions for repayment.
As an interesting side-note, the total amount for the program is capped at $5,000,000. Meaning, it's possible if the total claims by landlords across the province exceeds that amount, some landlords won't be getting paid or all landlords will be getting paid a little less. Time will tell how effective the program is, but for the time being, it provides a bit of certainty for landlords and tenants alike in these incredibly uncertain times.
Here's the order:
Effective as of 6:00 am on March 31, 2020, all retail and other commercial landlord are prohibited from exercising the remedies of notice to quit or distress available under a commercial lease, commercial agreement, the Tenancy and Distress for Rent Act, or otherwise for rent due on or after March 22, 2020 from a retail or commercial tenant who has been required to close their business or their business has between substantially and directly restricted under the requirements of a Medical Officer's order issued under the Health Protection Act.
Punishment for failure to comply with this order could result in fines between $500 and $10,000 for individuals and up to $100,000 for companies.
What does this mean?
Commercial leases have two main remedies when rent is unpaid:
- Notice to Quit - where the landlord evicts the tenant for unpaid rent.
- Distress for Rent - where the tenant has not paid rent for a certain period of time and the landlord can enter the space and sell their inventory, equipment, and other items to cover the unpaid rent. There is, of course, a property procedure for using this remedy.
The Nova Scotia government has used the extraordinary powers in the Emergency Management Act to prevent landlords from using their leases (contracts that the landlord and tenants have signed) to collect their rent. This means tenants who can't pay - don't have to during this period of time, and landlords can't do anything about it during this period of time.
Who does this impact?
This order does not apply to all tenants. If a tenant is an office space, for example, a landlord can still take advantage of the Notice to Quit and Distress for Rent remedies. The order only prevents these remedies from being used against tenants who are engaged in the following businesses:
- Gyms and fitness establishment,
- hair salon
- barber shop,
- spa,
- nail salon,
- body art establishment,
- restaurants offering in-person dining service,
- drinking establishment,
- registered day care,
- craft brewery or distillery with tasting room,
- personal service business serving only individuals,
- dentist,
- massage therapists,
- naturopathic doctor,
- Chinese medicine practitioner,
- Acupuncturist,
- Live, performing arts for audiences
Rent Deferral Support Program
The Nova Scotia government has also put in place a Rent Deferral Support Program aimed at helping landlords recoup some of their losses associated with the order. Support is available for up to $15,000 per tenant - up to a maximum of $50,000. The important thing to understand is that this is an indemnity, meaning you're not entitled to the $15,000 if you defer rent collection. You can only apply for the government to repay you for actual losses in the amount of $50,000 (maximum).
For example, if you sign an rent deferral agreement with a tenant and they fail to repay the rent as required under that rent deferral agreement, you can apply to this program to recoup the rent lost from that tenant for the period of time between April 1st and July 1st.
The criteria for qualifying includes having entered into a rent deferral agreement before April 1, 2020. This rent deferral agreement must cover the period of time between April 1, 2020 and July 1, 2020. The Rent Deferral Agreements do not need to forgive the rent payable between April and July - the payments are deferred. The agreement must include provisions for repayment.
As an interesting side-note, the total amount for the program is capped at $5,000,000. Meaning, it's possible if the total claims by landlords across the province exceeds that amount, some landlords won't be getting paid or all landlords will be getting paid a little less. Time will tell how effective the program is, but for the time being, it provides a bit of certainty for landlords and tenants alike in these incredibly uncertain times.
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| This post was written by Anna Manley. If you'd like to contact Anna you can send her an email: anna@manleylaw.ca |
Estate planning documents like a Will, Power of Attorney, and Personal Medical Directive are incredibly powerful - but they don't do everything. There are estate planning measures that need to be taken in addition to these documents that people may or may not be aware of. An example of one of these estate planning measures is ensuring your digital legacy can be preserved after your death.
What is a digital legacy? For most Canadians that includes Facebook photos. I say Canadians because this is a Canadian blog, but also because Canadians love Facebook; 77% of Canadians have a Facebook account (compare that with 68% in the United States).
I personally have thousands of photos on Facebook; they chronicle important life events from my law school graduation to the birth of my first child. To say these photos are absolutely precious is an understatement. Losing these photos would be devastating, but imagine if I passed away and my family couldn't view or access them.
Unfortunately, even if you have a Will, Facebook will not allow your executor access to your account. There have been multiple, extremely sad news reports of families trying to gain access to a deceased person's Facebook account - all ending with Facebook refusing the request for privacy reasons. Facebook also has a contract with you via the user agreement you clicked to accept; this is a contract that dies when you do (pardon the pun). This means, your Facebook account (along with many other social media and other online accounts) are estate planning items that need to be handled outside of the traditional estate planning documents.
How do you do this?
With Facebook, you set a legacy contact on your Facebook account. A legacy contact is a person on your friends list who looks after your account if it's memorialized. An account changes to a memorialized account after Facebook becomes aware of your death (likely through your legacy contact).
A legacy contact can...
(1) accept friend requests on behalf of a memorialized account;
(2) pin a tribute post to the profile and change the profile picture and cover photo; and
(3) If your settings allow it, they can download account content (i.e. photos).
I've outlined the steps for doing on your browser below. The instructions are similar for mobile devices.
Step (1)
Go to your Facebook account settings. On mobile go to "Menu" and scroll down to "Settings & Privacy" - expand it and select "Settings".
Step (2)
Under "General" you should be able to see "Memorialisation Settings". Click on the "Edit" button. On mobile select "Personal Information" then select "Manage Account".
Step (3)
Enter in the name of someone you trust on your Facebook friends list. This person doesn't necessarily need to be your executor (if you have appointed one), but remember they will be the only one with access to your Facebook account after you pass away. Make sure it's someone who you trust to follow through on your wishes... also... tell them what your wishes actually are.
Once you select your legacy contact, a window will pop up where you can send them a message to let your legacy contact know that they've been appointed. I appointed my spouse, but you can appoint any person on your friends list. As with your executor, it's best to choose a person who will give effect to your wishes. You can even put those wishes in the message you send when you appoint them.
You can also select a yearly reminder settling where Facebook will automatically remind you who your legacy contact is and give you the option to change the friend who fills this roll.
Another option you can select on the "Memorialisation Settings" page. You can either allow your legacy contact to download what you have on Facebook. This is a good option to select because then your legacy contact can download all your photos in order to preserve them offline.
Overall, the Facebook legacy contact option is a necessary part of the estate planning process that occurs outside of your Will and other estate planning documents. For anybody with a digital presence, considering what is covered by your Will and what isn't is an important part of ensuring your most precious assets are safe for your family to cherish even after you're gone.
What is a digital legacy? For most Canadians that includes Facebook photos. I say Canadians because this is a Canadian blog, but also because Canadians love Facebook; 77% of Canadians have a Facebook account (compare that with 68% in the United States).
I personally have thousands of photos on Facebook; they chronicle important life events from my law school graduation to the birth of my first child. To say these photos are absolutely precious is an understatement. Losing these photos would be devastating, but imagine if I passed away and my family couldn't view or access them.
Unfortunately, even if you have a Will, Facebook will not allow your executor access to your account. There have been multiple, extremely sad news reports of families trying to gain access to a deceased person's Facebook account - all ending with Facebook refusing the request for privacy reasons. Facebook also has a contract with you via the user agreement you clicked to accept; this is a contract that dies when you do (pardon the pun). This means, your Facebook account (along with many other social media and other online accounts) are estate planning items that need to be handled outside of the traditional estate planning documents.
How do you do this?
With Facebook, you set a legacy contact on your Facebook account. A legacy contact is a person on your friends list who looks after your account if it's memorialized. An account changes to a memorialized account after Facebook becomes aware of your death (likely through your legacy contact).
A legacy contact can...
(1) accept friend requests on behalf of a memorialized account;
(2) pin a tribute post to the profile and change the profile picture and cover photo; and
(3) If your settings allow it, they can download account content (i.e. photos).
I've outlined the steps for doing on your browser below. The instructions are similar for mobile devices.
Step (1)
Go to your Facebook account settings. On mobile go to "Menu" and scroll down to "Settings & Privacy" - expand it and select "Settings".
Step (2)
Under "General" you should be able to see "Memorialisation Settings". Click on the "Edit" button. On mobile select "Personal Information" then select "Manage Account".
Step (3)
Enter in the name of someone you trust on your Facebook friends list. This person doesn't necessarily need to be your executor (if you have appointed one), but remember they will be the only one with access to your Facebook account after you pass away. Make sure it's someone who you trust to follow through on your wishes... also... tell them what your wishes actually are.
Once you select your legacy contact, a window will pop up where you can send them a message to let your legacy contact know that they've been appointed. I appointed my spouse, but you can appoint any person on your friends list. As with your executor, it's best to choose a person who will give effect to your wishes. You can even put those wishes in the message you send when you appoint them.
You can also select a yearly reminder settling where Facebook will automatically remind you who your legacy contact is and give you the option to change the friend who fills this roll.
Another option you can select on the "Memorialisation Settings" page. You can either allow your legacy contact to download what you have on Facebook. This is a good option to select because then your legacy contact can download all your photos in order to preserve them offline.
Overall, the Facebook legacy contact option is a necessary part of the estate planning process that occurs outside of your Will and other estate planning documents. For anybody with a digital presence, considering what is covered by your Will and what isn't is an important part of ensuring your most precious assets are safe for your family to cherish even after you're gone.
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| This post was written by Anna Manley. If you'd like to contact Anna you can send her an email: anna@manleylaw.ca |
Whether you're a first time home buyer or this isn't your first rodeo, the process of buying a home can be intimidating. There's a lot of jargon and a lot of legalese, but the most daunting question of all is:
How much is this going to cost me?
Fair question. You've worked hard to save the money for a downpayment on a house - now it's time for you to take the plunge and you're worried about surprises.
To make the whole process a little bit less intimidating, we've broken down the fees associated with a real estate transaction (from the buyer's side) so you can have an idea of how much the whole deal will actually cost.
Let's handle this with a case study.
Buyers: Linda & Greg
Linda and Greg are a young couple who just moved back from Alberta to start a family in Cape Breton. They found a perfect house in Sydney River (for $200,000) and already have plans for a fence for the dogs. They've saved to buy the house and only need a mortgage for $75,000. Let's say, for the sake of this post, that there was no adjustment made to the original purchase price. Linda and Greg's fees on the transaction (on top of the purchase price) will be:
Deed Registration Fee ($100)
When you buy a property you receive a deed from the seller. It's your lawyer's job to register the deed on the parcel register (an online system for all things land and property in Nova Scotia); the province charges a fee of $100 for registering a deed.
Deed Transfer Tax (1.5% of the Purchase Price)
In the CBRM the deed transfer tax is 1.5%. This is money collected from your lawyer when your lawyer registers your deed. On a $200,000 purchase this would be $3,000. There are some exemptions to this, but that's for another post.
Mortgage Registration Fee ($100)
Just like registering the deed in the online system, the province charges a fee of $100 to register your mortgage. Registering the mortgage is the responsibility of your lawyer and is required by your lender as a condition of providing the money for the purchase.
Title Insurance (Starting at $200) or Survey (Starting at $1,000)
Your lawyer will also recommend obtaining either title insurance or a survey of your lot. Title insurance protects you from certain defects with your land which could arise after the sale. A survey is prepared by a qualified Nova Scotia Land Surveyor and (most of the time) is preferable to title insurance because you can deal with problems proactively, rather than after you've already purchased the land. Your lender will require either title insurance or a survey to make sure they're covered in the event the land is something other than what everyone thought.
Legal Fees ($900 to $1,200 + HST)
Of course there are legal fees and of course they range. They range based on the lawyer and on the nature of the transaction. Ultimately, it's best to find a lawyer who is experienced with property transactions and who is attentive to your needs. This is likely the biggest transaction of your life.
Here's the total breakdown for Linda and Greg:
If I were representing Linda and Greg in this transaction, I would contact them ahead of time to let them know the final amount I needed from them in order to close. In this case, that would be $129,830.00 ($204,830 minus $75,000 in mortgage funds). If they obtained a bigger mortgage with a smaller down-payment the picture would look a bit different.
As you can see, the fees for Linda and Greg add up to $4,830.00. Most of that is the $3,000.00 Deed Transfer Tax owing to the municipality. You can see how Linda and Greg, as new home buyers might be surprised by these fees. When it comes to finances it's good to be prepared, especially when you're buying a home.
If you're selling a home, the fees are very different. We'll cover the fees associate with the sale side of a real estate transaction in another post.
How much is this going to cost me?
Fair question. You've worked hard to save the money for a downpayment on a house - now it's time for you to take the plunge and you're worried about surprises.
To make the whole process a little bit less intimidating, we've broken down the fees associated with a real estate transaction (from the buyer's side) so you can have an idea of how much the whole deal will actually cost.
Let's handle this with a case study.
Buyers: Linda & Greg
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| Linda & Greg - aren't they cute. |
Deed Registration Fee ($100)
When you buy a property you receive a deed from the seller. It's your lawyer's job to register the deed on the parcel register (an online system for all things land and property in Nova Scotia); the province charges a fee of $100 for registering a deed.
Deed Transfer Tax (1.5% of the Purchase Price)
In the CBRM the deed transfer tax is 1.5%. This is money collected from your lawyer when your lawyer registers your deed. On a $200,000 purchase this would be $3,000. There are some exemptions to this, but that's for another post.
Mortgage Registration Fee ($100)
Just like registering the deed in the online system, the province charges a fee of $100 to register your mortgage. Registering the mortgage is the responsibility of your lawyer and is required by your lender as a condition of providing the money for the purchase.
Title Insurance (Starting at $200) or Survey (Starting at $1,000)
Your lawyer will also recommend obtaining either title insurance or a survey of your lot. Title insurance protects you from certain defects with your land which could arise after the sale. A survey is prepared by a qualified Nova Scotia Land Surveyor and (most of the time) is preferable to title insurance because you can deal with problems proactively, rather than after you've already purchased the land. Your lender will require either title insurance or a survey to make sure they're covered in the event the land is something other than what everyone thought.
Legal Fees ($900 to $1,200 + HST)
Of course there are legal fees and of course they range. They range based on the lawyer and on the nature of the transaction. Ultimately, it's best to find a lawyer who is experienced with property transactions and who is attentive to your needs. This is likely the biggest transaction of your life.
Here's the total breakdown for Linda and Greg:
If I were representing Linda and Greg in this transaction, I would contact them ahead of time to let them know the final amount I needed from them in order to close. In this case, that would be $129,830.00 ($204,830 minus $75,000 in mortgage funds). If they obtained a bigger mortgage with a smaller down-payment the picture would look a bit different.
As you can see, the fees for Linda and Greg add up to $4,830.00. Most of that is the $3,000.00 Deed Transfer Tax owing to the municipality. You can see how Linda and Greg, as new home buyers might be surprised by these fees. When it comes to finances it's good to be prepared, especially when you're buying a home.
If you're selling a home, the fees are very different. We'll cover the fees associate with the sale side of a real estate transaction in another post.
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| This post was written by Anna Manley. If you'd like to contact Anna you can send her an email: anna@manleylaw.ca |
Regardless of the size of your estate, the person you choose as your executor is going to have their work cut out of them.
It's the responsibility of the executor to deal with your estate assets in accordance with your will. In order to deal with those assets, your executor needs to be able to find them. It can be hard for executors to find assets like insurance policies or shares if you don't have the paperwork in one place at the time of your death. Finding estate assets after an estate has been dealt with can also add unnecessary time and expense to the handling of your affairs.
Rather than send your executor on a treasure hunt for your estate assets, you can take steps to make their job easier by keeping and updated list of your assets along side your will and other estate planning documents.
Remember, just like your will, the information inside the Estate Workbook is sensitive financial information and should be treated (and stored) with the utmost care. Keep the Estate Workbook in the same safe place you store your will and other estate planning documents.
Download and complete our Estate Workbook to make your executor's job easier.
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| This post was written by Anna Manley. If you'd like to contact Anna you can send her an email: anna@manleylaw.ca |
CB Voices is a group of women stakeholders in Cape Breton Island. They believe in encouraging economic growth through fostering business, entrepreneurship, immigration, arts and culture, and tourism.
As part of their work, they created a series of videos called Women in Entrepreneurship. They interviewed female business owners from across the island in diverse sectors on their businesses and the how entrepreneurs can make a difference in the economy.
I was honoured to be included in the series along the outstanding female entrepreneurs. I was in good company and I encourage you to watch the interviews of all the other fantastic women - these are the people who are making a difference on our island.
I've posted my video below so you can hear what I had to say about my business, women in law, women in entrepreneurship, and the cultural shift happening on the island toward entrepreneurship.
Bonus: one of our office cats is featured.
Enjoy!
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| This post was written by Anna Manley. If you'd like to contact Anna you can send her an email: anna@manleylaw.ca |
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| Click on the image to view full size infographic. |
Welcome to the 2018 Manley Law Real Estate Update. We do this every year to ensure our clients have a good idea of the housing trends on the island.
As of April 2018 there were 531 houses listed for sale in Cape Breton. That's down from 663 this time last year.
Of the houses currently listed, the least expensive was being offered for $19,000, while the most expensive home listed for sale was priced at $1,200,000.
The average price of a residential home in Cape Breton was $128,000 in the last quarter of 2017 - that's a 4.3% increase from the same time in 2016. The Average price for Nova Scotia is currently $240,000 and the average price for Canada is $494,309.
Residential home sales in Cape Breton increased 3.7% in the last quarter of 2017, compared with the fourth quarter of 2016. Compare that to the average increase of 9.1% for all of Nova Scotia.
In 2017, 2,808 people moved to Nova Scotia from other provinces - an increase of 11.4% from 2016. International immigration added 900 people to the province.
Pretty interesting stuff.
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| This post was written by Anna Manley. If you'd like to contact Anna you can send her an email: anna@manleylaw.ca |
This is the Manley Law Estate Planning Guide. It's a good start when you're thinking about estate planning. The following is a list of what to think about before you come in to see us about your estate planning.
Who will be your executor?
The Executor is the person who will administer the terms of your will after your death. We recommend appointing an executor and an alternate executor (i.e. a person who would act in the event the executor is not able or unwilling to act). Both the executor and the alternate should be capable people who are likely to be around at the time of your death, but, and this is the most important requirement, the people you choose must be people you trust.
Who are the beneficiaries?
Beneficiaries are, no surprise, the people who benefit from your will.
Where a testator (the person signing the will) is married they may choose to give all they posses to their spouse in the event of their death, but this is not necessarily the case. A testator may choose to benefit their children, rather than their spouse, or to benefit one child more than another child. The testator has the power of decision, but this power is somewhat limited by a spouse’s interest in any property of the marriage. It is most common for couples with children to give all they possess to their spouse, but if the spouse dies before the testator the testator gives their possessions to either their children or the children’s trust (if the children are young).
Think about who you want to receive a benefit from your will and what you want that benefit to be.
Who will be the guardians of your children?
Who would you like to name as the guardian of your child or children? This can be a complicated question when it comes to blended families, but it’s prudent to identify one or more people you wish to be responsible for the future care of your children in the unlikely event both you and the other parent have died.
Also think about who you would like to handle the funds left to children. This can be your executor, the children’s guardian, or a third person as the children’s trustee. The children’s trustee (or trustees); this is the person who will manage the financial needs of the children and any money from your estate to be used for the care and maintenance of the children.
What about your assets?
What you have is almost as important as who you want to give it to. If you have any of following we can have a discussion on how to handle the item in question:
Real Property
Stocks / Investments
Business Interests
Pensions
Life Insurance
Expected Inheritance
Annuities
Valuable physical property (art, jewelry, collectables, etc)
Items of sentimental value (clothing, jewelry, books, photo albums, etc)
How you hold your assets is also important.
Have you named beneficiaries on your RRSP?
Do you hold property jointly with a spouse?
The answers to these questions can change and estate planning strategy.
Estate Planning isn’t just about wills.
A Power of Attorney and a Personal Medical Directive may be necessary to ensure your affairs are handled before death.
Power of Attorney
In the Power of Attorney you appoint an attorney and an alternate who can act as you would to manage your affairs - mostly of a financial nature. We often prepare an enduring power of attorney (one that will allow their spouse to act for them if they become incapacitated).
Think of who you would like to appoint as your attorney (this person is not necessarily your spouse) and also think of who you would like to be your alternate (the alternate will only act if your attorney cannot act or is unwilling to act). Your attorney should be someone who is responsible, trustworthy, and likely to be able and willing to act.
Personal Medical Directive
The Personal Medical Directive is a document in which you outline your values and wishes relating to the management of your care in the event you are not able to make these decisions yourself. The person you appoint, known as the delegate, can make decisions regarding your living arrangements, nutrition, treatment (as well as stopping treatment); however, your delegate cannot make active decisions regarding physician assisted death.
Think of who you would like to appoint as your delegate and also who would be a good alternate. Your delegate should be someone who is responsible, trustworthy, and likely to be able and willing to act. The delegate does not necessarily need to be the same person as your attorney.
Estate planning can be simple or complex, depending on what you have and what you'd like to see happen. Ultimately, it comes down to a discussion with your lawyer. This is a good list to get you started thinking about the process.
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| This post was written by Anna Manley. If you'd like to contact Anna you can send her an email: anna@manleylaw.ca |
Who doesn't like pie? If you own the family cottage with your siblings or other family members it's probably more like a pie than you think. Looking at your deed you might see something like this:
Peter MacKenzie, of Sydney, Nova Scotia
-and-
Paul MacKenzie, of Sydney, Nova Scotia
-and-
Mary MacDonald, of Iona, Nova Scotia
AS JOINT TENANTS AND NOT AS TENANTS IN COMMON
What does "Joint Tenants" mean?
What does "Tenants in Common" (the other alternative) mean?
These are two different way people can own property (also known as "hold title"). One means the whole pie - shared. The other means separate pieces of the pie.
Let me unpack that.
Imagine the cottage as a whole pie.
If you own your property with other people as Joint Tenants is means you have an un-divided interest in the property. What does that mean? In the case of Peter, Paul, and Mary it means they each own the whole thing, but they own it together. They each have an un-divided one-third interest. Their pie would be undivided. Peter can't sell his interest in the property as a separate piece and the property can't be sold without Peter's signature.
Joint Tenancy also carries with it the "right of survivorship" - meaning if Peter dies tomorrow, Paul and Mary automatically inherit his interest in the property without the need to use Peter's will (if he even has one). Due to the right of survivorship, in the context of the family cottage, and in other cases as well, Joint Tenancies can be used as and estate planning measure to avoid the cottage being included in a deceased person's estate (i.e. to avoid probate fees).
Tenants in Common on the other hand means each of the owners of a property have their own separate interest. In the case of Peter, Paul, and Mary, if they held the property as Tenants in Common, instead of Joint Tenants, they would each have a separate one third interest in the cottage. Their pie would look like this:
Mary can even sell her interest to anybody she wants. If Mary dies tomorrow her interest in the property is handled by her will (if she had one) and her heirs will receive her share of the cottage. This means, over time, cottages can end up with many owners. Imagine Mary died leaving her cottage interest to her three children as Tenants in Common and they each had three children , leaving their respective interests to their children as tenants in common. Assuming Peter and Paul are still alive after all this, the pie would look something like this:
Which is why most people try to keep things simple by giving the cottage to their children as Joint Tenants. This strategy doesn’t always work. Families have unique dynamics and leaving the family cottage to your children as Joint Tenants is not a one size fits all solution. You need sound advice to determine what's best for you and your family.
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| This post was written by Anna Manley. If you'd like to contact Anna you can send her an email: anna@manleylaw.ca |
