Redpath & FellBARRISTERS & SOLICITORS
← All practice areas

Residential Real Estate

Purchases, sales and refinancing across Simcoe County.

We close somewhere between three and four hundred residential transactions a year, most of them in Barrie, Innisfil, Springwater and Oro-Medonte. The work is procedural until it isn't, and the value is in catching the thing that would have derailed your closing while there is still time to fix it.

Title searches turn up more than people expect: unregistered easements, a shed two feet over the line, work orders from the 1990s, and — with alarming regularity — a discharged mortgage that was never actually discharged.

You will be given a full statement of adjustments before signing day, not on it, so there are no surprises about what you need to wire.

What this covers

  • Residential purchases
  • Sales and discharges
  • Refinancing and switching lenders
  • Title insurance and title searches
  • New-build and builder closings
  • Private mortgages
  • Transfers between family members
  • Severances and boundary issues

Questions we get asked

When should I call a lawyer?
As soon as your offer is accepted, and ideally before you waive conditions. Some of the most useful things we do — reviewing the status certificate on a condo, checking a survey, flagging a title issue — only help if there is still a condition to walk away on.
What does closing actually cost?
Our flat fee, plus disbursements of roughly $500 to $900 (title search, registration, title insurance, software charges), plus land transfer tax. On a $750,000 purchase in Barrie the provincial land transfer tax alone is about $11,475. First-time buyers get up to $4,000 of that back.
Do I need a survey if I'm buying title insurance?
Usually not — title insurance covers most of what a survey would protect you against, at a fraction of the cost. The exception is when you are planning to build, sever, or put up a fence, in which case you want to know where the line actually is.

Related areas