The Keys To The House

Thumbnail: Keys to my house

The trans­fer of keys is the very last step in buy­ing a house. Aside from all the steps involved in actu­al­ly pur­chas­ing one, to get a set of keys means the com­ple­tion of many things. A con­sol­i­da­tion of one’s funds (deposit­ed in trust, post­ed on file, ver­i­fied by accoun­tants). The pay­ment of all par­ties involved (lawyer for legal fees, gov­ern­ment for land trans­fer tax, insur­ance com­pa­ny for title insur­ance, as well as the sell­er for the full amount of the house). A record in the munic­i­pal min­istry of the trans­fer own­er­ship (once the lawyers of both par­ties involved have paid for an exe­cu­tion clear­ance cer­tifi­cate).

The keys sig­ni­fy that the deal has been closed, and noth­ing has gone wrong between the time of pur­chase and the day of trans­fer. Usually, I wor­ry about things going wrong, even when there’s only a mar­gin­al chance, and I have a com­plete under­stand­ing of this fact. When some­one shakes my hand after an inter­view to con­grat­u­late me on get­ting the job, I’ll wor­ry for days, right up until I get my name on the con­tract. This was no excep­tion. Anything could go wrong — sell­er chang­ing his mind, hid­den law­suits or liens, or even a fail­ing of the final inspec­tion — from the day I made the bid to the last min­utes of the clos­ing date.

Yesterday, I walked into my lawyers office. I car­ried with me a cer­ti­fied cheque that was most­ly my down­pay­ment, but also includ­ed his fees and tax­es (I’m for­tu­nate enough to not have go into my line of cred­it to pay for the lat­ter two). I signed sev­er­al doc­u­ments, received my sta­tus cer­tifi­cate and con­do papers, as well as oth­er let­ters of con­fir­ma­tion.

Today I picked up my keys, and now I own a house.

3 comments

  1. And what a beau­ti­ful house it is! Congratulations man, I look for­ward to being in there!

  2. That’s so awe­some, con­gradu­la­tions.

  3. wow, i swear i typed it right the first time.
    *con­grat­u­la­tions.
    /hides

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