Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

Your leading a sheltered life on the East coast. I've bought and sold half a dozen houses in Toronto. None of them went past that midnight hour. Perhaps it has to do with the sophistication of your average buyer.

Look, as a buyer I don't want you as a seller to have any chance to get other potential buyers in the door. Once I decide I want to buy the house I want the competion frozen out. So I make you an offer with a time constraint. ie. Midnight. If we don't do a deal before then, I walk away.

If you are asking for 100k I may start at 90k and keep making you offers until you accept. At some point I will quit making offers but obviously it will be before 100k since in fact you will accept 100k any time I want to offer it. In Canada houses are generally listed at a price they seller is prepared to negotiate down from.

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

yes i am

In your book, what does period mean? in mine and to almost everyone else it would mean "end of" "no negotiation" "no leeway" etc etc
If you are too thick to understand what you wrote yourself, i will remind you:
"If you make an offer and the seller accepts it, you are legally bound to buy it. Period."
Your words, written by you.
Offers come in all shapes and sizes, with and without conditions, there is no "period"


As usual you are talking out your arse and spreading misinformation. you do far more damage than help.

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

Yeah and speaking as one who took 12 months to sell his house in the UK and for 8 of those 12 months had a Canadian property in addition to my UK property, I would caution strongly against buying anything in Canada before you have sold in the UK UNLESS you can afford to pay two mortgages/bridgin finance.

I think the rest of the arguments on this thread are around the conditional nature of an offer vs conditions of an offer. The offer we put in for our house was conditional on approved finance within x number of days. (At this stage we had acceptance in principle from the mortgage company.) Once we had approved finance we were obliged to complete the transaction by an agree date subject to a number of conditions such as Ok water test result for the well and bringing furnaces/oil tanks upto code. Our sale almost fell apart on the last day when it transpired that the vendor was not planning to replace the oil tank on the 2nd furnace for the garage which required replacing to meet code. We ended up with a compromise where we shared the cost for the work and everyone was happy!

Having experienced the worst of the UK process in terms of a number of disapointments, let downs and bloody annoying circumstances, I much prefer the Canadian system!

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

I agree with every word you have written, what Beckington wants to know are the facts, not someones guess at them.
The facts are you put in an offer (with conditions) which was accepted, you were not legally obliged to buy unless all conditions were met. All conditions were not met and you could have walked away.
Some simpletons can't seem to grasp this.

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

Wow, thanks for all the responses - even the ones disagreeing with others! :D
I was told about the right of first refusal thing by my Canadian mortgage broker, so it does exist in Canada. Maybe it's just for the properties sold subject to sale of another house though. I guess the bit that worries me is all the horror stories I've heard of sales in the UK falling through at the last minute, but that must be last minute before exchange, not completion, one would hope, so once we hit the exchange of contracts things will be a lot safer for us. I guess we either put an offer in subject to our house sale now and see if they take it or wait a few weeks until we exchange and put an offer in then if it's still on the market, which it may not be. Oh the stress!

As for the running costs of the house while we are still in the UK, we should be moving in January so it should only be a month roughly and I have family living close to look after the place. If I was moving to an area I didn't know well I'd never consider buying a place so quickly, but this is my hometown and the area we are interested in is only small - a dozen short streets at best. And a lot of the houses on these streets are unsuitable in some way, so that doesn't leave many opportunities for the 'dream house'. There will be more, of course, but it'd just mean renting for an indefinite period of time which we'd prefer not to do.

Anyhow, thanks again. I think I'm less confused, though that's debatable!

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

I think in your rush to try and annoy me personally, your brain is not engaging. Either that or you don't know what a contract is.

Read MY LIPS. A contract is a legally binding agreement. Period.

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

As Ianik rightly said, there is nothing stopping you from putting in an offer subject to your house selling. Do you have a realtor in NS? if not then it would be a good idea to have a word with BHPNP (Brian) on here, he's a realtor in NS.
The very best of luck whatever you decide on.

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

Yes I suppose after spending 40 years in Canada and buying/selling half a dozen houses, I don't know what a contract is or what a conditional offer is or what conditions of an offer are.

Beckingham I would suggest you read carefully what Atlantic Xpat wrote. "I would caution you strongly against buying anything in Canada before you have sold in the UK UNLESS you can afford to pay two mortgages/bridgin finance."

Once you sign an offer and it is accepted, it is a legally binding contract. What some 'simpletons' can't seem to grasp is that things work both ways. If the conditions ARE met, you are oblidged to buy. The seller MET Atlantic Xpats conditons and Atlantic Xpat ended up paying 2 mortgages for 8 months.

You can make an offer subject to sale of your house in the UK. If they accept that offer, fine. Really that is the only real question here. I for one would never accept your offer on that basis. The only seller who would is one who has no other interested buyers. In that case, I would have to ask if you are looking at buying the right property. Why would there be no other interested buyers?

My last word on the subject. :)

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

Nice to see that world war 3 has broken out again. :rolleyes:

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

[/QUOTE]My last word on the subject. :)

Thank god for that, perhaps we can now get on and advise factually

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

congratulations - we are heading to NS also. We are hoping to be out there by Christmas and have been browsing mls for what seems like months and have seen a selection of what may have been our perfect homes come and go. We haven't been brave enough to do what you have but can see the reasoning behind it. Our real estate agent insists house prices in NS have risen by 8% in the last year - especially in the Halifax area. Prices have definately risen since our last visit in August 2004 - although 8% may be a real estate euphenism... but prices in most of the UK are falling -so you may have made a shrewd business move. Where exactly are you heading?

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

Hi Maple

We've been addicted to mls now for about a year! Crazy! We want to move to the west end of Halifax - not a big area! WHere are you planning to go? If all goes according to plan (hah!) we will have our last Christmas with family here and then be in Halifax early in the new year.

Charmaine

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

Have pmd you Charmaine.

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

TTFFTT :D

Rich.

Re: Buying house in Canada help
 

If you don't put an offer in for the house you like so much at this moment in time, you may lose the opportunity. However, if you do and you have not sold your house in the UK you stand the chance of owning two houses. A situation you could probably solve by reducing the price of your house in the UK or renting it out. There's another point: Does the selling price of your house in UK have any bearing on the funds you will have to purchase your next house. Say if you get a lot less for it than you had planned?

There is a condition the seller can use in the circumstance where the buyer's offer is conditional upon selling their property. In Ontario this is called an 'escape clause' and is used less and less. Basically it gives the seller the right to give the buyer notice that the deal is off if the buyer cannot waive the condition of selling their property by a specified amount of time (like 24hrs). This is usually used if a better offer comes along (the house continues to be shown).

A 'Condition' can be anything as long as it is legal. So you could in fact make your offer conditional on selling your house in the UK, even selling it at a specific price, but whether a seller would accept such a condition is another matter even with an escape clause. I would deter a seller from accepting as it's not really much of an offer because of this particular condition.

If you reach the stage of having your offer accepted with conditions it becomes a legally binding document. When all conditions are met or waived you are legally bound to buy the house and the seller is legally bound to sell it to you. There are ways out:
1. You could lose your deposit and stand the chance of being sued for any losses and or expenses incurred by the seller. This may include suing you for the difference between the price they get and the one you offered if it was less.
2. Mutual release - both buyer and seller agree to scrap the agreement by signing a mutual release.

Many purchasers in Ontario are quite happy to agree to buy and then put their home on the market. In a hot market it's only sensible. But buy first or sell first is always a personal decision.