This month’s blog post contains a couple of reminders about possession dates and the First Time Home Buyer’s property transfer tax exemption.

I have been asked this question a couple of times recently. The client is buying a house with a closing of Sept. 30 but the tenant can’t move out until 2 months after closing. So the possession date should be Nov. 30? The answer is NO. If you are buying a property you want possession of it as that gives you physical control. You might not be able to occupy it until Nov. 30 but you want to be able to go it, enter it, etc. on the completion date.

With the First Time Home Buyer’s Property transfer tax exemption remember that the buyer, if he has not filed tax returns in BC for 2 of the last 6 years, has to have been ordinarily resident in BC for at least one year before the transfer is registered in order to get the exemption. So if your client is a recent immigrant, make sure to find out for sure when they arrived here. I know an agent that advanced an existing closing date because the vendor wanted to close earlier and the buyer agreed. But the agent hadn’t properly advised the client about the one year requirement and assumed the client had been here long enough. By the time the agent realized her mistake, the vendor wouldn’t change back the date. So the agent ended up paying the property transfer tax because of her mistake.