A topographic survey is essential if you are planning a large addition to your house

As I mentioned in a previous post, we were unable to obtain a Real Property Survey from the vendor when we bought our house. And, unfortunately, you cannot apply for a permit from the City of Ottawa for an addition to your house without having a survey. Furthermore, if the planned addition is larger than 500 square feet, then a topographic survey must be submitted with the permit application. In our case, we also required a topographic survey because our land slopes downwards at the back and we are toying with the idea of a walk-out basement or a series of terraced patios. In order for our architect to plan this, she needs a topographic survey to determine exactly what the elevations are.

Just before Christmas, we received the survey report from our surveyor. On the plus side, we now know that we have no property irregularities, and our architect can begin drafting up some conceptual ideas for the house. On the negative side, it cost $2625.00 to have the survey completed.

Now, you may well ask why didn't we just have the survey done as a condition of buying the house, and, thereby, save ourselves almost $400 in title insurance premiums. Well, the simple answer is timing. It took four weeks to have this survey completed, from the moment I contacted the firm, to the moment they delivered the report. There is no way the vendor would have settled for reciept of a survey as a condition of sale, given the trouble we had securing sufficient time from them to get financing in place. So, we had to pay for title insurance and then pay to have a survey done.

If you are interested in knowing what hoops you must jump through with the City in order to build an addition to your house, a pool, finish your basement, etc., the City of Ottawa has an informative Homeowner's guide for small projects, which outlines all the steps involved and a useful Residential Construction Checklist. It's good reading before you begin.

Real property surveys and title insurance

When we purchased the our new house in Ottawa, we were unable to obtain a Real Property Survey from the vendor. A real property survey is essential to ensure that there are no issues preventing us from having clear ownership of the property.

Now we know that the vendor must have had a survey done in the past, because they undertook extensive renovations in 1980, and they would have been required to submit a survey to the city in order to obtain their permits. However, we checked with the city and with the Ontario Land Registry Office and we could find nothing.

At the Ontario Land Registry Office, you can do a quick computer search of any property to see if a survey has been registered in the past. If one is registered, then for a small fee, you can obtain a print-out of the survey. However, apparently, while most surveys today are registered with the Land Registy Office, it was not necessarily common practice 30 years ago. Add to that the complications of Ottawa amalgamating with several surrounding communities a few years back and, well, let's just say things fall through the cracks. Either way, there was no survey on record for our property.

So, with no survey in hand, we followed our lawyers recommendation and purchased title insurance. Title insurance is an insurance policy that protects residential or commercial property owners and their lenders against losses related to the property’s title or ownership. It protects against a wide range of title related issues that could affect our ability to sell the property in the future, including unknown title defects, liens against the property, encroachment issues, title fraud, and errors in previous surveys or public documents.

Title insurance is pricey. Our one-time premium, plus lawyers fees and tax came to $378.10. Still, it's well worth the piece of mind.