Expert: Phil Nicols - 7/8/2008

Question
Hi,

I need to know how to obtain information about land parcels as it relates to a business my company owns. There is a rezoning hearing coming up in the area and I need to know the parcel #'s of our property by address, but have been unable to find a website that will provide that to me without charging. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Answer
Kristen

you need to go to the municipal offices where the property is located. ask for the "tax office". there, they will give you a map where you can point out the property.

the map will give you a roll number.

the roll number tells you what book to look in.

when you get the book, you can look up the ownership via the number.

This is a real sore point with me because we used to have this access directly through our MLS system.  I used to use it every day trying to contact owners of properties.

Unfortunately our local real estate boards decided not to continue that access -- they say it is due to privacy however that is a farce because here in Ontario, that information is still clearly public knowledge!  You don't have to be a real estate agent or a lawyer etc. to access it.

Furthermore the only thing that this decision blocked, is access to properties where the owner does not live there -- for example, vacant land or a commercial property where the owner might be numbered company, and that owner might live in a different country.

What they fail to protect (if they are in fact protecting anything) is residential properties where a man's home is supposed to be his castle.

In 99.9% of those cases, the owner lives in the property so it's so easy to look them up by the phonebook or reverse search.

Furthermore, if this was due to the Privacy Act, then what about the Freedom of Information Act? does that hold no bearing?

The way I described above is the way we used to search properties back in the 80s before Internet was prevalent.

Now they have made it so cumbersome for us involved in commercial real estate, that about a year ago, I decided to quit our local real estate Board -- especially after finding out that the only thing we need to hold our real estate licenses in Ontario is too long to RECO (the real estate Council of Ontario) yet they try to sell us on the longing to a real estate Board, as well as Ontario real estate Association, as well as Canadian real estate Association.  These are all associations that are not necessary to hold our licenses in the province of Ontario.

Since they decided to take away the one thing I was paying for, there was no reason for me to keep paying all these three associations as well as be part of their bureaucracy (God knows we have enough of that).

There is one other way, at least here in Ontario (if you're calling from the states, your access may vary from state to state or province to province is a case maybe)

Here in Ontario some large law firms subscribe to services -- expensive services.  One cost something like $3000 a year plus an access fee (per user) and also a fee per search!  Worst, they want direct access to your bank account!  That is you can't subscribe using a credit card or anything else!  When you click on a property whether you get the right one or not, you are charged for that search!  Furthermore, that only gives you half of what you need there is another service you need to belong to as well to get the other half of what you need!

So if it's important property, I do it the old-fashioned way and go to the municipal office.  Where this gets very cumbersome is if the property is located in a municipality far away from you.  This means you have to go to that municipality to check the tax records.

That's the way it is in Ontario.

Hope that helps

Best, Phil