Purchasing a resale condominium property

Condition for status certificate review

As a purchaser of a condominium property, you and/or your agent should ensure that the agreement is conditional upon the review of the status certificate.

A status certificate is a document prepared by the condominium corporation in a prescribed form pursuant to the Ontario Condominium Act, as amended, which contains relevant and vital information relating to common expenses, outstanding judgments against the corporation, current agreement, assessments levied as well, it contains a copy of the current declaration, by-laws, and rules.

Once we are retained, we order the status certificate from the condominium corporation on your behalf. Please note that condominium corporations have ten days (including weekends and holidays) to provide us with a status certificate. As such, you and/or your agent should always ensure that the condition deadline provides us with sufficient time to order and review the status certificate. Please note that we charge a fee starting at $250.00 + HST to review the condominium documents, and the condominium corporation charges us a prescribed fee of $100 to prepare the status certificate; please consider this in budgeting for your new purchase as it will form part of your closing costs.

Our review of the status certificate does not encourage you to proceed with or cancel the transaction. The purpose is to inform you of what your lawyer views as critical legal matters in the status certificate to allow you to assess the risk of proceeding.

Please note that our review of the status certificate does not include any comments on matters beyond the scope of a lawyer’s services, such as a review of the floor plan and layout, financial statements, and budgets. You may want to consider reviewing the financial-related documents with your accountant. In addition to this, our standard status certificate review does not include a review of the declaration, rules, and by-laws. If you would like for us to review these documents, please contact our office for a quotation.

A Status Certificate is only valid for the date it is issued. It is, therefore, essential that we either update the certificate before closing or obtain title insurance to protect you if circumstances change between now and the closing date. We recommend title insurance to our purchaser clients.