CalgaryPete

I am planning to sell my house in Calgary and book a flight to England with my dog, Nyla.

Our situation is:
The house is ready to sell.
I have chosen a realtor and a pet shipper (Boomerang).
I would like to arrive in the UK in March this year, but we could go earlier or later if necessary.
We have somewhere to stay when we arrive, and we are lucky as we have no constraints on dates for our UK accomodation.
Demand for housing in Calgary is quite strong, so we should not have to wait long before getting offers. (It's a typical 3 bedroom detached house at a typical price.)

My limited understanding is:
It is better to still be resident in Canada on the completion date otherwise there may be some tax issue?

Should I wait until the sale is agreed and the planned completion date known, then book the flight for my dog?

Or, will I have to pick a flight date for Nyla, and then hope that the house sale is agreed and completed before we fly?

Any advice or experience on this timing issue would be very welcome,

Thanks

lgabriel73

If you go to the UK before the sale is completed you can always assign a power of attorney to do the closing for you or have the realtor mail the closing docs to you in the UK. I found out from my realtor that I dont have to present for the closing. I would definitely wait until you have a sales and purchase agreement signed before you book your flights though. You should be able to get a flight for you dog by booking a few weeks in advance no long term notice is needed for major airlines from what I have been told.
Good luck to you and Nyla.

lf1

We returned from Calgary in 2012 and had considered renting our house and perhaps selling after we left Canada. The tax advice we were given on this matter was that Capital Gains Tax (CGT) would not apply to any gains from our orignal purchase date as it was our principal residence.

However, if we did not sell the house CGT would be applicable to any realized gain from the date of change in use from principal residence to rental property. We were told to obtain a valuation of the property as close to departure date as possible if we chose to rent.

We decided to sell and fortunately our house sold very quickly, so things were very straight forward for us.

Best of luck with your move.

Mummy in the foothills

Once we got a firm date for the closing, we requested 7 days to move out after the date. Sometimes you can pay a weeks rent to the new owner for this but ours didn't want anything and gave us the week.
Then we didn't have to rush off to a hotel while I finalized all the banking, money transfers etc and had time to get rid of the last bits of furniture. Dh took the last two days of the week to do a final clean and clear while staying at a friends house down the street.

CalgaryPete

Thanks for the replies. The pet travel company, Boomerang, have also said the flight for Nyla could be booked just 10 days ahead. That's assuming the microchip and rabies vacination have been done, which they have.

Cumbrian Lass

We came home (UK) from Red Deer a couple of years ago without selling the house . We actually rented it out for over a year as property was not moving . So when we sold the property last year, if we would have made a profit on the house we would have had capital gains tax to pay. Its best to be a resident in our experience ....good luck with your move back,we are loving being home and our dog can get out for walks all year round

goldie4

I agree totally with the advice above. If you go to the UK before the sale is completed you can always assign a power of attorney to do the closing for you or have the realtor mail the closing docs to you in the UK. It is better to still be resident in Canada on the completion date otherwise there may be some tax issue? – I think yes, it’ll be better for you.

Cumbrian Lass

I also forgot to say that the lawyer held a 3rd of our total sale cash for 4-5 months.This was incase we owed the tax man any money. It was awful really because although we had sold,we could not buy any thing until our money was released. Just thought i would let you know that bit too