A Garage Nobody Had Legalized, Found Before Closing

The situation

Zeynep noticed it first, standing in the side yard during the second walkthrough of the New Liskeard property she and Kerem were buying together. The detached garage, added by the sellers a few years earlier, seemed to sit closer to the neighbouring fence than she remembered from the listing photos. It was a passing thought at the time, the kind of thing a buyer notices and then sets aside because the excitement of a purchase tends to smooth over small doubts. She mentioned it to Kerem on the drive home, and Kerem mentioned it to us a few days later, almost as an aside, while confirming a closing date.

Kerem, a letter carrier, and Zeynep, a hairdresser, had been saving for close to three years for a down payment, and the property, priced in the high four hundred thousand range, fit both their budget and what they needed: enough space for a growing family and, eventually, room for a proper garage rather than the aging carport most homes on the street still had. The existing owners had already built one, which was part of what made the property appealing. It meant Kerem and Zeynep would not have to go through the process of adding one themselves.

As part of standard due diligence on the purchase, we ordered a survey and reviewed the property's zoning and building compliance before closing, a step that is routine on every file but that this time turned up exactly the concern Zeynep had noticed in the yard. We recommend this kind of review on nearly every purchase involving a structure the current owner built without a permit pulled recently, since additions from years past in particular tend to predate more careful municipal record-keeping and can hide exactly this kind of gap without anyone along the chain of ownership realizing it. The garage was closer to the side property line than the applicable setback allowed, and there was no record of a variance or permit on file authorizing the reduced setback. Whatever the previous owners had done when they built it, it had not gone through the process the zoning rules required.

This meant the addition Kerem and Zeynep were buying into was not simply an aesthetic bonus. It was a structure that, on paper, did not comply with the property's zoning, and that non-compliance would transfer to them the moment they took title, along with whatever risk came with it. It also meant that any future insurance claim tied to the garage, a fire, a collapse, water damage from the very drainage pattern the setback affected, could become complicated if an insurer discovered the structure had never been properly authorized, since some policies treat undisclosed non-compliant construction as grounds to deny or reduce a claim.

What the review found

A structure built without the required permit and without a variance for a setback that does not meet the zoning by-law does not automatically have to come down. Municipalities generally do not go looking for these problems on their own, and many non-compliant structures sit for years without incident. The risk is different: it surfaces at exactly the wrong moment, usually when a future buyer's lawyer runs the same due diligence Kerem and Zeynep's had, or when a neighbour complains, or when an insurer asks questions after a claim. At that point the owner is the one left applying for a variance under pressure, sometimes years after the fact, with no guarantee the Committee of Adjustment will approve it.

We explained to Kerem and Zeynep that they had three realistic paths. They could ask the sellers to resolve the non-compliance before closing, which would likely have meant delaying or unwinding the purchase given how little time remained. They could close as planned and accept the risk as a known issue, disclosed and priced in if the sellers agreed to a credit. Or they could close on a negotiated basis with the sellers covering the cost of legalizing the garage through a minor variance application, with the process continuing after closing under an arrangement that protected their interests in the meantime.

They chose the third option, in part because delaying the purchase risked losing the property to another buyer, and in part because the garage itself was something they wanted to keep rather than remove.

The complication was the neighbour whose property sat closest to the setback in question. Besnik owned the adjoining lot, and the garage's reduced setback meant it sat noticeably closer to his side yard than the zoning by-law contemplated. A minor variance application requires notifying adjoining owners and gives them the right to raise concerns at a hearing, and Besnik, once notified, indicated he intended to oppose the application, citing concerns about privacy and drainage running toward his property along the narrow gap between the garage and the fence line.

On top of the neighbour's opposition, the municipality's Committee of Adjustment was working through a backlog that pushed hearing dates out several months past when an application would typically be scheduled. That delay meant the variance process, and the resolution Kerem and Zeynep needed, would not track the closing date at all. It would run on its own timeline, regardless of when the sale itself needed to happen.

What we did

1. Negotiated an amendment to the agreement of purchase and sale requiring the sellers to fund the variance application and any related costs, since the non-compliance existed before Kerem and Zeynep ever became involved with the property, so the financial burden of fixing it should not fall on the buyers who had done nothing wrong and had no way of knowing about the problem before the survey came back with the setback measurement.
2. Arranged for closing to proceed on the original date under a holdback arrangement, with a portion of the sale proceeds held in trust until the variance was resolved, so Kerem and Zeynep were not forced to choose between losing the property to another buyer and accepting open-ended, undocumented risk instead of a properly negotiated resolution with a fixed process and a clear end point behind it.
3. Filed the minor variance application promptly once instructed, including the survey and supporting materials needed to explain the existing setback and the reasons a full removal and rebuild of the garage would be a disproportionate response to what was, in practical terms, a modest encroachment that had caused no visible harm to anyone in the years since it was originally built.
4. Reached out to Besnik directly ahead of the scheduled hearing to understand the specific drainage and privacy concerns behind his objection, rather than letting it proceed straight to a contested hearing without any attempt at an earlier, less formal resolution that might address what he actually cared about, rather than simply defeating his objection on paper at the Committee without ever hearing him out.
5. Proposed a compromise addressing Besnik's stated concerns, including a modest grading adjustment to redirect drainage away from his property and a screening fence along the shared boundary, in exchange for Besnik withdrawing his formal opposition to the application before the hearing date, avoiding a contested proceeding that neither side had much appetite to sit through given how narrow the actual dispute turned out to be.
6. Kept Kerem and Zeynep informed through the months of delay at the Committee of Adjustment, managing their expectations about the municipal timeline rather than letting an open-ended wait feel like the file had stalled or, worse, been forgotten entirely by everyone involved, since a backlog at a municipal committee gives no running commentary of its own progress and rarely offers a firm date to plan around.
7. Attended the eventual hearing to support the application and confirm the negotiated conditions with Besnik on the record, once his opposition had been withdrawn in exchange for the agreed screening and drainage terms both sides had already accepted, so the Committee's decision reflected a settled agreement between neighbours rather than a dispute that was still technically open on paper before the panel.
8. Followed up after the hearing to confirm the sellers completed the grading and fencing work within the terms the couple had negotiated, closing out the holdback and releasing the remaining proceeds only once every condition of the approval had actually been met on the ground, rather than relying on the sellers' own assurance that the promised work was finished as agreed.
9. Registered confirmation of the approved variance against the property so any future purchaser's due diligence would find a clean, documented answer instead of the same unresolved question Kerem and Zeynep's own review had uncovered at the start of this file, closing the loop for whoever eventually buys the property from them years from now, long after this file is closed.
10. Explained to Kerem and Zeynep, before they signed off on the compromise, exactly what Besnik was entitled to raise under the notice process and why a negotiated resolution was likely to serve them better than forcing a fully contested hearing on principle alone, given the added delay, cost, and uncertainty a contested hearing before the Committee would have brought with it.

The outcome

The Committee of Adjustment approved the variance, but not on the original terms alone. The approval came with the conditions Besnik had negotiated: a defined grading change to redirect drainage away from his property and a screening fence installed along the shared boundary at the sellers' expense, consistent with the holdback arrangement built into the purchase agreement.

Kerem and Zeynep kept the garage, which mattered to them, and did not have to fund any part of the legalization process themselves. The sellers bore the cost of the variance application, the fence, and the grading work, consistent with the amendment negotiated before closing. The trade-off was time. The full process, from the walkthrough where Zeynep first noticed the setback to the final hearing and installation of the fence, ran close to eight months, well past their original closing date, though closing itself had proceeded on schedule under the holdback.

Besnik did not get everything he initially raised. His preference, stated early in the process, had been for the garage to be brought fully into compliance or removed, and neither happened. What he did get was a resolution to the two concerns that mattered most to him in practice, the drainage and the lack of privacy along the shared boundary, addressed through terms he had a direct hand in shaping rather than terms imposed on him.

None of the parties got the outcome they would have chosen if the non-compliance had never existed. The couple got the home they wanted with a documented, legal garage instead of one carrying quiet risk into every future sale, at the cost of an eight-month wait they had not planned for going in. When they eventually sell the property themselves, the file will show a clean, compliant record rather than a question mark left for the next buyer's lawyer to find.

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