Ryan Galiotto

Posts Tagged ‘toronto real estate agent’

One of the best aspects of my business as a Toronto Real Estate Agent is the day to day variety of the work. There are many twists and turns with every client and they always surprise me with a new challenge. I was asked a very interesting question the other day.

How far down do I own the land when I buy a house in Toronto, Ontario?

My initial thought was to say 6 Feet, I have no idea why, it just felt right. I am glad I didn’t go with my gut. Apparently this was not right, however it wasn’t wrong either.

I started my search to try and find a specific depth. With the surge in commodities over the past few years there has been a sudden influx in Prospectors staking claims to various mineral rights. There have been some changes in technology that allow a Prospector to stake a property online instead of having to walk the property and physically stake the claim.

This has led to a lot of confusion and several instances have blown up and landed in court. A gentleman by the name of Rob Westie was involved in one of these conflict claims and said “A free miner is the last free man in Canada. They have more power than the RCMP to go on to your property and do whatever they wish.”

The confusion and conflicts are caused by all the different types of rights someone may claim on a piece of land. There are mining rights, mineral rights, surface rights, free entry, who has access to the land for living on and who has rights for exploration. A lot of the laws date back to The Gold Rush in the middle of the 19th century, some of them don’t really stand up in today’s society.

All of the conflicts that are raised in Ontario are heard by the Mining and Lands Commissioner.

If you want to be a Prospector and stake a claim you need to be over 18, fill out a form and hand over the large sum of $25.50 for a prospectors license. Here is the link if you are interested, prospectors license.

This licence will allow you to stake claims on land and get access for exploration purposes. To register a claim it is $3 per hectare in Ontario.

Canada has what is called a ‘Free Entry’ mining system which allows anyone with an exploration claim to stake a site and explore the land. All you need to do is provide the owner of the surface rights with one days notice that the exploration will be taking place.

In a residential area no claims are allowed to take place under the dwelling portion of a property without consent of the home owner. For any exploration to take place on a residential lot in a registered of sub division additional permission is needed from the Minister of Northern Development and Mines.

There is a legal way you can protect your property from someone else claiming the mineral rights to explore the land. You simply need to do it first!

You will need to sign up for your prospectors licence and then stake a claim on your own property. The catch is that you need to actively test and explore the land otherwise the claim becomes inactive and is back out on the open market again. You will need to show assessments with a minimum value of $400 per year. One gentleman dealt with it by registering his property as a shooting range and then put signs up everywhere notifying people that they risked being shot if they wandered around his property. It was crude but effective.

Here is a link to all the properties in Ontario that have claims on them or the surface rights and mineral rights are combined, Ontario Claims Map

If you see a black circle that means the surface rights and mineral rights are combined, if you see a semi circle that means either the Crown or someone else has the mining rights.

MLS.ca is the multiple listing service where you will find most Toronto homes that are for sale, infact this is where you will find most of the homes for sale in Canada. Mls.ca recently moved to a new site location realtor.ca, with this move there was an increase in search options. There are now four different ways to search for properties on mls.ca, those include: mls number lookup, quick search, interactive map search, and advanced search. I would recommend the quick search option.

1. Enter the url mls.ca or realator.ca into your browser

2. On the main page of mls.ca select Residential Properties

3. Type in the street, neighbourhood, City or MLS Zone of where you want to search. Try to be as specific as possible. If you know which part of the city you want to live in type it in i.e. Rosedale. If you have no clue than keep it general i.e. Toronto

4. Fill in the other drop downs that are applicable for your particular property search. If you are looking for a broad range of matches leave as many fields as possible blank. If you wish to narrow it down type in specifics (price range, detached house, minimum number of bedrooms etc.). Keep in mind if you are too general and there are more than 500 results than the system will require that you narrow it down.

5. Once property matches are generated you can either navigated through the results on the map or click on each individual listing on the right hand side organized from lowest to highest priced properties. If you do not like the map you can also click gallery view or thumb nail view in the upper right hand column. This will change the view so that the map does not dominate the page.

A few tips that I like to use include: – Be sure to enter in a lowest price (this will eliminate getting matches on properties that are for lease etc..) – Zoom in/out on the MLS map on the area you are searching, this will help you get to know the location you are looking in. – If you find a property you like check out all the details (does it come with parking, what is the size of the lot etc – Contact your Toronto real estate agent with the mls number to get their opinion

One important note that I tell all of my clients is that the publicly available mls.ca is not necessarily up to date. Often Toronto real estate agents find that when they upload a new property it will take a couple of days for it to become available on the public mls.ca. It does however become immediately available on the mls.ca that is reserved for real estate agents.

To get the best of both worlds I register my clients to receive automated emails from the agent only mls.ca. This allows them to receive by email all of the properties that matches their search criteria as soon as they are loaded into the system. This is also something that I gladly provide any prospective clients regardless of whether they hire me or not. Please contact me to start to receive these automated emails.