In an email to me last week, he wrote, "It's my recommendation (if a new survey is not ordered) that a purchaser / vendor / agent / solicitor make every effort to find a legible copy of an existing survey for every real estate transaction. Combined with a solicitor's opinion and a title insurance policy, a homeowner will not only know that they are protected from fraud, but they will also have a pretty good idea of what they actually bought!"

In [Joe] and [Gloria]'s case, the inability of the sellers to provide the promised survey was a breach of contract and placed the transaction in jeopardy. Fortunately, at the very last minute, the sellers finally produced a legible copy of a 1988 survey by Anton Kikas Ltd., showing my clients' house and six adjacent houses which were all built at the same time.

When the real estate agent says that title insurance is a substitute for a survey, an appropriate response is that the statement is simply incorrect. Title insurance is just that - insurance. It's a backup position which can underwrite any resulting losses, but it is not a substitute for the information a survey reveals. Nor is it a substitute for the warnings a survey can provide that something is wrong with the title, such as an encroaching structure or fence, or the fact that a neighbour owns part of the land that was supposedly part of the transaction.