scrubbedexpat0103

Sorry to jump on this thread but I am in a similar position.

If already 'sale agreed' on a UK home and the paperwork is with the relevant solicitors etc I will be living and working in Ontario when the money will actually land in my bank account - in several months time?

What are the implications?

This is my only UK/worldwide property.

Thanks

Siouxie

See 'Canadian Tax' on this wiki link https://britishexpats.com/wiki/Tax_a...e_UK_to_Canada

Grimnorth

Rotate Hi and welcome to NS.

We live in rural NS about 50 minutes out from Dartmouth & Halifax. (I am originally from South Yorkshire and my wife Surrey).

My wife works in Dartmouth and I work from home, although we have offices in Halifax and Bedford.

Just a couple of things to consider. Rural property prices are still lower than the city and you can still pick up a large house with land at a very cheap price. However, properties are moving a lot faster at the moment with some going for over asking price. A lot of buyers from Ontario and Alberta buying pretty much sight unseen. Although it will not last forever, it is in the short term driving up prices.

Rural living is not for everyone. They are all very friendly but a bit rough & ready (Think Duck Dynasty). We do not have crime here as such just lots of people with cars not MVI'd (MOT) for years, and who have not had insurance or a licence for twenty years. We lost power five times last year because of people speeding, drunk, drugs or just insane driving into power poles. Overall though life is good, they are very helpful and will do anything for you, even the insane ones. Real crime is very rare because everyone knows everyone and their parents and grandparents.

As you are looking to work from home you also need to consider communications and internet. Rural NS is only just rolling out Fibre connections. We were done this week after five years here. There is still a lot of rural NS not done. Canada post have offices in most places but where you live the nearest could be 25-40 minutes away.

Rural life is good for kids with lots of community clubs and events, schools are still not huge. My nephew in the UK was happy when his sons class dropped below 30, I don't think we have that many in the whole school. Kids are moved around by school buses which also provide out of our service for clubs and school events. You definitely need two cars though. Nothing is far away but in UK terms it is not close either. We have a local market, pharmacy, cafe and home store within 20 minutes but larger supermarkets etc are at least 40-50 minutes away.

If you give me a shout when you are coming over we can meet for coffee. If you need anything in the mean time let me know.

Rotate

Thanks for the info Grimnorth - I think we will probably end up somewhere less rural and more built up but I appreciate the information and a coffee sounds good!

Rotate

Necro'ing my old thread - but we made it!

Sold our house, cars and we landed in Halifax last week.

Thank you to everyone on the forum for your advice and especially everyone who has worked on the PR Spouse FAQ - we just got our "Invitation to pre-arrival services" letter so all is going to plan on the PR front as well.
🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 🇨🇦

Siouxie

Congrats!! Hope you'll be very happy in your new life! Keep the updates coming...

Grimnorth

Well done guys and welcome to NS

Lichisadave

Welcome to Canada we came over 3 years ago and no regrets, originally from Hull not far from Huddersfield and familiar with the pub scene there lol
Noba Scotia looks beautiful and my dream place to retire to. Good Luck to you and your family.

Rotate

Second post-move update. We have been here for 5 months now, I just re-read my OP and the crazy plan did work out.

One thing that changed though as we got close to the move date we realised that the rental market was tougher than we imagined, as the crazy housing market was impacting the rentals (people selling up and moving to rented / people selling houses and kicking out their tenants)... plus on paper we didn't look like good tenants, no job, no credit rating, no references and 3 pets.. so we realised we would have to try and sell our UK house to free up the equity to take with us to Canada and buy a house in cash. Buy. A. House. In. Cash. (u wot m8??)

We put the UK house for sale with Purplebricks (not terrible, not amazing) on the Friday and had the sale accepted on Sunday (before the For Sale board was put up!). The cash came through from the sale as we were in Heathrow. (Wasn't accessible for a few days until we'd sent AML evidence to the bank).

Kids finished school on Friday 23rd July.
Monday 26th July - Thursday 29th was Pickfords packing up our belongings.
Friday 30th we flew from LHR to Halifax YHZ via Toronto Pearson YYZ.

We flew Air Canada, flights were good. The AC staff at Heathrow asked to see our Marriage Certificate (at this point non-Canadians couldn't enter Canada, spouses/immediate family could). When we landed in Toronto the airport was rammed but we passed the non-negotiable things - Immigration, Covid proof and Customs. I had a heart-stopping moment at Immigration as I'd scanned all 4 passports at the self-scanners and filled in the "why are you coming here?" questions and selected the option that "all answers are the same for all 4 passengers" - this meant that the Immigration officials asked to see my wife's PR as I'd selected "Moving here" (British, flying on an eTA & awaiting PR). Had to explain and apologise that she was "Visiting" as her reason, they sorted that out for me and gave her 6 months as a visitor (phew).

But with the extra COVID steps (having to collect hold luggage and go back through security) we missed our connecting flight to Halifax, and so many other passengers were bumped from this flight that we only got "standby" tickets for the last flight to Halifax. We didn't get a seat and had to be rebooked (which took about an hour), and it ended up being 2 nights in Toronto as Saturdays flights were all fully booked so we got tickets for Sunday morning. We naively walked to two hotels next to the terminal, both were fully booked. At this point I was pretty delirious with sleep deprivation and sleep, but managed to somehow call a dozen hotels in the area and find one with a room. Loooong day, but we made it.

We flew to Halifax on Sunday 1st August, the airport was deserted compared to the Friday nightmare, and after 2 hours we landed in Halifax. Hoorah! It was a beautiful sunny day and we felt much better about our decision (we'd not seen any of Toronto other than a few dark and damp highways between a drab Marriott hotel and the airport). Was great to see trees, lakes, sunshine and blue skies!

We stayed in a total of 4 AirBNBs and 1 hotel. We use a British Expat as our Realtor - https://richardpayne.ca/ - who ferried us around the HRM for 3 weeks while we viewed houses and bid away. We finally won a house bid on 22nd August - so just over 3 weeks after landing. We felt much more relaxed once we'd got the house sorted.

We got the keys to our new house on 2nd September, got the kids registered in the local elementary school, they didn't miss a days school which was pretty amazing.

Customs stamped our container paperwork and didn't inspect it. Mackies (subcontracted by Pickfords UK) delivered our container on 14th September, in the meantime we slept on borrowed airbeds and borrowed furniture from neighbours on our new street (have I mentioned how welcoming and friendly Canadians are?!). The movers were numerous and reassembled most of our furniture / beds (which we didn't expect), and we slept in our old beds finally after a gap of 47 days!

My wife's spouse PR application was received September 2020, and we got "Request Letter" and "Decision Made" on 21st October 2021, but it's now Jan 2022 and we're still waiting for CoPR - so annoyingly I've had to apply for a Visitor Record and throw $100 at IRCC as her 6 months visitors runs out 30th Jan 2022.

But long story short - we are all happy with the move, we're happy with our new province, house, life and country. It feels like a safer place to get stuck as the latest Covid wave washes around the world. Glad we did it, it was very very very tempting to bottle in, especially in the last few months as the potential move date approached. I thought it was 50-50 if we would right up until we saw the "SOLD!" sign go up in front of our house.

I'll plug Paul Kurucz (https://kurucz.ca/expatrepat) for email support during the build-up, being in the strange position of being a Candian Expat Repatriating to Canada on paper.

We found some things easy (Canadian citizenship, big chunk of cash) and some things hard (no recce visit, knowing nobody, no job / house lined up).

HGerchikov

Thank you - I enjoyed reading your happy story! So glad your move worked out - hope everything continues to go well for you all.