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Encroachment Leads to Renovation from Hell

Amos Hertzman and Caitlin Pencarrick bought a cute little old Vancouver house, with plans to do renovations.  They never thought they would get into a battle with City Hall.  The house was built in 1892, before we had high tech satellite surveying systems.  It turns out that most of the houses on the street encroach onto the neighbor’s lots.  Over the years, the neighbors got along and would grant encroachment agreements to each other when required.  That was the case for this house, where the house sat 8” over onto the neighbors’ lot.  When the couple starting interior renovations, they discovered that the foundations of the house were crumpling.  A house inspection that been done when it was purchased, but the inspector just noted that the foundation was typical of a house of this age.  In order to replace the foundations, the house was raised up off of the old foundations, and the owners applied to the City for a development permit for the new foundation.  The City refused to grant this new permit, because they felt this was in fact a new foundation, and it should be moved back onto their own property and not be constructed on the neighbors’ lands, where the existing foundation was located.

Since they were halfway through their project at that point, and their was house was sitting up on steel rails, the owners felt there was no time to apply for a City waiver, or to subdivide and buy a few inches of land from the neighbor. So they moved their house.

We have many situations similar to this in Southern Alberta, in the older areas of town.  In Taber, many of the downtown buildings encroach on the neighbours. 

The lesson to be learned here is that if you own a building that encroaches onto your neighbor, get good advice and do your research before you start a renovation, because the municipality may not be willing to allow a renovation onto the encroachment.
 

Paul G. Pharo, Q.C. is a Lethbridge Lawyer