Land titles office delayed?

[Gammaboy]

I'm in the process of selling some farmland (signed papers tuesday) and got a call from my lawyer yesterday saying land titles is swamped so is not taking more work until they are caught up? Instead of getting paid monday it will probably be early November?
Anybody hear of this before and know what timeframe to expect? I haven't done any harvesting yet and this is gonna put a kink in my plans.
Thanks

[schmedlap]

It is not that they are not accepting registration submissions. It is that, as is not unusual, it is taking about 2 weeks from the time documents are submitted for them to be processed. So, if the deal is being done in standard format for farmland, where the purchaser does not pay until registration is complete, the money will not be paid until around month end.

[Gammaboy]

Thanks for the clarification. When papers were initially done up closing date as Oct 21 and thats when I expected the cash. I'm new at selling property and have no idea how this all works.

[Cement Bench]

ask and get confirmation when the papers were submitted,

end of the month closing dates are more transactions than say the 13th

call land titles yourself and ask. one in the north and one in the south of alberta

[Dean2]

Spring and Summer there are far more land sales as well as that is when most staff take holidays. It is pretty common for them to be backed up in Sept and Oct. Like CB said, end of month closings add even more to the backup. It would not hurt to call LT and see what their real backlog is, that way you know for sure if the lawyer is giving you straight goods, but my bet is that he is.

[NewGuard84]

You can see the registration timelines at the Spin Alberta website.

10-14 days is typical and that timeline can be extended at high activity times, as mentioned above, and LTO clerks will say they are subject to activity.

Interestingly, at low activity time (around Christmas) they never seem to catch up enough to reduce the registration turnaround time.... hmmm....

[Drewski Canuck]

Ask your Lawyer if offering Title Insurance to the Buyer at Seller's expense would speed up the payment.

Don't know what your Contract says, do not know what the Purchaser's Financing is if any. Don't know what the encumbrances are. But Title Insurance came about exactly because of this problem.

Back in 2004 it was taking as much as a month to register and the Occupation Rent was Prime Plus 2 + so often a per diem of $70 a day which no one much liked.

Title Insurance is pretty cheap in comparison.

Drewski

[amosfella]

Late this summer, dad tried pulling a title, and it took over 2 months to get the title back.

[Drewski Canuck]

Amosfella,

I really do not know what you are talking about.

if you have a credit card and know the Legal Land Description you can go on SPIN 2 which is the Alberta Land Titles Registry system, and search on line and have the PDF Certificate of Title downloaded to your computer in about 3 minutes.

Cost is the search fee of $10.

Alot has changed in the legal biz because of online search capabilities.

As for Registration of a Transfer of Land, it would not have taken 2 months either, unless there were multiple rejections from Land Titles.

Drewski

[amosfella]

Pulling a historical title. Dad wanted a certified copy.

[Drewski Canuck]

Amosfella,

I used to do alot of Real Estate conveyancing practice, and still do alot of land based litigation.

Historical titles can be searched through SPIN 2 as well. Once downloaded, you will see that these are in fact certified cancelled historical titles.

Again, search fee is $10 and can be paid by Credit Card on line.

Who was stringing your Dad along anyway?

Drewski