Niagara Falls

[Pfm1011]

Huge sale coming up in Niagara, ...However not one buildable piece in the lot.

These are all illegal lots that were created using testamentary devise( loophole in that planning act that was closed in 1990) The courts ruled these were not buildable lots in accordance to the planning act but they are legal severances in regards to title.

It was quite the scam attempt and very interesting read. Excellent lesson on how NOT to succeed .. 

http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2004/2004canlii21275/2004canlii21275.html

Here are the key points

HISTORY
[3]        Although the Ontario Planning Act of 1983 imposed statutory controls on the conveyance of land by conventional methods, it was silent with respect to testamentary devises, which meant that a testator could devise portions of his real property to different beneficiaries without being required to obtain the prior approval of a land severance committee.  Montemurro used this oversight in the Planning Act to acquire targeted parcels of land which he would then encumber with a charge payable to himself or to a nominee for the entire purchase price.  The land would then be transferred to a terminally ill person for nominal consideration upon the testator executing a will devising the property to nominees or alter egos of Montemurro.  The conveyances were executed in checkerboard fashion to ensure that abutting lots were allocated to different owners thus assuring that they remained separate and marketable building lots. 


[4]        A word about Mr. Montemurro?s background is necessary.  He had been the founder and operating mind of Astra Trust, a trust company operating in the Niagara Region in the early 1980?s.  The company was closed by the Ontario Government and Montemurro and others associated with him were found guilty of fraud and sentenced to significant terms of imprisonment.  It was after his release from prison that Montemurro turned his mind to the land development scheme that I have previously described.  Because of his reputation and his status as an undischarged bankrupt, Montemurro?s activities attracted wide spread publicity and the Province?s Attorney General took steps in the courts to prevent Montemurro from proceeding with his testamentary devise scheme.  However, in February 1991, Mr. Justice Gravely of this court held that Montemurro?s scheme of ?severance by devise? did create title in the various beneficiaries of the devise but that the parcels into which the devised property were divided did not qualify as ?lots? for the purpose of obtaining building permits unless the ?lots? conformed to applicable municipal zoning by-laws.  Gravely J.?s decision was upheld by the majority in Attorney General for Ontario v. Montemurro, reflex, (1993) 12 O.R. (3d) 1.  The dissenting opinion of Findlayson, J.A. would have invalidated the entire scheme as a fraud on the Planning Act.

 
This "gentleman" tried this on about 15 farms and created hundreds of lots . They started selling off last fall via tax sales  and probably will keep popping up for the next couple years.

The city of Niagara  fought this and in 2003 won an OMB decision which resulted in all these lands falling under Niagara official Plan 'Special policy area 37" 

http://www.niagarafalls.ca/city_hall/departments/planning/pdf/official_plan.pdf  ( starts half way down page 2-81 and runs for 6 or 7 pages , all not pretty)

Here is my summary from the last Niagara sale , just about sums it up

"The Montrose Rd. ES, is a dogs breakfast . It has been subject to OMB hearings, lawsuits, official plan amendments, special zoning provisions ( not for the good of the owner ) Regional  Flood plain, Significant wet lands,  Environmental assessments, restrictive covenants, a "special policy" (No 37) in the Niagara official plan. The town will  never connect sewers,storm or water etc..Specifically "the city  will not consider  requests" ( Polite for F*ck off)  The property cannot be built on due to frontage which the town "under no circumstances" will allow to vary. Its all in writing. To build , you have to buy 3 additional parcels off the previous owners family who lost the land..Let me know how that works out as they lost the land plus untold hundreds of thousands in an OMB fight which they got slaughtered on.

And to add insult to Injury, when you win the land the 30 parcels ( who cant build) around are going to try to bust your chops when you try to remove the restrictive covenant as I'm sure they want to recover some of their losses and will see it as a opportunity to do so.

It will cost a minimum of 150 to 200K in engineering just to build an outhouse.. need a hydrological study  and environmental assessment for the outhouse..literally "


The more detailed information is that the lots MUST be 200 foot frontage and 2.5 acres.  UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES can they be smaller.  If you manage to meet the frontge and acreage requirements, then all of the above clauses kick in

In order to build you could buy a few over time and then join them but the tax value exceeds the value of the lots. In addition all of the above problems still exist

If you call the city and ask about zoning , they dont mention the Special policy Area , ( not intentionally, its just you are getting a clerk who simply refers to the zoning map, they might reference bylaw 22-2002 or something like that which is essentially the implementation of Special policy 37)


I spent a day checking out the lots that might work..that story to follow

[Pfm1011]

Here is the summary of the Niagara lots I checked..Need 2.5 acres and 200 frontage  I wasted half a day down there looking at this stuff ( of course being an idiot I didn't do welland at same time)

05-20    Only 2 acres but has frontage  .  Portion of land deemed open space. Special policy kicks in.. Looked at , beside small car lot, overgrown and wet 

06-10   Stanley   ave   1 acre  , 150 front....Cant build  did not visit

06-12 06-13 06-14    2 acres each, 175 front  too small cant build   13 and 14 have bush so policy area might kick in extra fun  ( 120 meters of significant wood lot or wetland ..environmental impact study)  ( does the conservation/ open space on the next lot count as wetland???) who knows but the two lots combined ( you would need)  would not be worth the min bid required

006-15   Ridge rd   no acreage  ..flat crap land
06-16 and 06-17   Montrose      are 3 acres and 210 frontage so they should work ( so I thought)   Both are extremely low compared to creek that runs across front. 6-16 has creek half way across front and running down center  and 6-17 has creek along entire front.  Whats weird is property line stops at creek not road. You would need permission to cross creek  ( good luck on these ones) and you need mass amounts of fill ( oops Special policy 37 again, Never get the approval to change contour etc ) Also since lots are set back behind creek , may not be deemed as frontage

If you buy all three you might be able to build but not worth the cost.

Note : Across rd from 15, 16 and 17 there is a 100 acre  farm with new 3700 Sq ft house listed at 579 and it hasn't sold so whats land worth down there???MLS?: 2091377  Probably 20 or 30 a building lot tops

06-24, 25, 26 , 27   All too small on frontage and acreage

6-29 to 6- 38    All way too small except 6-35   ( which was the main one I trekked down to see..surprise...

6-35  Is 260 front with 12 acres   . has barn , has a Sh*t load of garbage of every type you can imagine . A local has decided it should be a scrap yard . will need a few 40 yard containers and a front end loader. Still might be a good site .   There is about 6 or 8 chemical tanks, my pen died so I didn't get the names off the labels , could just be farm stuff but doesn't look like it , If someone goes , please get name off tanks .  Come home , do a title search....Attorney General has Certificate of Pending Litigation on lot, thats a crown interest and stays with the lot... half day down the toilet

Not one good piece in the sale..

Well at least this Saturday coming up wont be wasted...TFC home opener 

Sorry should add containers were empty , ( most if not all)   If someone goes , post a picture too..

[Pfm1011]

I went to welland ( Thorold st  will be redeemed)  so I popped back over to Morris to check what was in the barrels,  Several different chemicals but appears they are empty or full of water although I didnt taste it They are not farm use but I think the pack rat just wanted the barrels

I have attached picts of the some of the crap on the site . Doesnt come close to showing  it all but gives an idea, I revise my previous post, Will need more then one or two 40 yarders.


This is the only "half decent" piece but has the crown interest problem on top of this crap.

[Pfm1011]

2

[Pfm1011]

3

[Pfm1011]

4

[Jayz]

....Attorney General has Certificate of Pending Litigation on lot, thats a crown interest and stays with the lot...

Pfm1011, do you kown what this certificate is about? How can we find it out? Thks.

[Pfm1011]

I didnt dig it all up but it involves the attorney general and the suit against Mr montemurro ET AL ( lots of ET AL listed), The case I quoted above  is 2004 and this mess started in 90 or 91 , OMB in 2003 so it appears that the legals may not be over with this matter as they went at least 14 years and could be still running today. I believe pending certificates run like mortgages which can be voided in court 10 years after the last payment ( last case activity for pending certs) so I think you may be  exposed till 2014 . Even then you have costs to purge it.

 Pending litigation can be ugly as the land is essentially security if the old owners estate  loses...He loses and you lose the property. Also once the lands taxsale, how much of a fight are they going to put up??.  Would not matter for normal parties but this is a crown matter and therefore sticks past the tax sale. It also isnt like outstanding income tax etc as they can be easily  quantified .    If you dig up info , let me know but before chasing this go take a drive past as there is s sh*tlocker of garbage so Im thinking 15 to 20K  of cleanup presuming that there is nothing scary in the barn. You cant really see from the picts but that mobile home is filled to the brim with crap.  Also doubt there is a well or septic so this is getting up there as the land isnt worth much in that area. Im betting the assessment of 66  isnt far off and may be high as the frontage is small for 12 acres ( 260 )   Seems like alot of trouble for the money,

[speedfreeksteve]

Well thats a huge load of info! I do have to say thanks for sharing all that.

It seems like Niagara area practically has bi-monthly tax sales these days. It's a shame that so much of the land has been either abused or severed improperly to the point of being unbuildable.

[Pfm1011]

lots of Info but remember its free and worth every penny 

Last fall  only one lot ( the hundred acre piece) was a "special policy" lot.  I did a pile of research last year on that one. Tried to find a loophole that would make the 100 worth something before 20 years. Not to be found.  This sale they are all the "special lots". Credit to Niagara. They have the official plan on-line, GIS mapping etc all available.   The next sale or two will be tons of these lots and then they should all be gone and back to "normal" sales.

Hagersville had a bunch of these go up last year but they didn't have the "special policy 37" like Niagara . They just put a hold on them . I guess the Niagara group really pushed the OMB stuff so the city pushed back. The real stupid thing here is the vast majority of the owners  never appealed their assessments. The minute the city said no ( 1990) they should have appealled the assessment  ( a silly trait of many people as they look at the assessment and convince themselves that is still the value) . Since they didn't, the outstanding taxes exceed the value of the land. IE one acre , non buildable lot on Morris , 19k minimum. Need 3 to build.  A few of these lots only have any value to the adjacent owners  ( real owners ) of non policied lands but I'm betting  most of the lots will be vested by city, combine 3 or 4 and sold by the city eventually. Unfortunately the high tax don't make it viable for one of us to combine them and make a profit,

Does anyone know if there is a GIS program available like the google maps idea? The GIS is handy as heck but not every town has them online . I'm looking for detailed topographic mapping , more accurate then claimsmap and the google map topography isn't that good either. They also dont show floodplain, open space, woodlots, significant wetlands etc .

If anyone hasnt played with it yet, check out the niagara map viewer, go to the development view ( under public tab) and play with the layers. shows everything you need to know in regards to floodplain , zoning etc. Takes a bit of playing as layers will cover other layers but its all there. Wish everytown had this.

http://map.niagarafalls.ca/

[Harkonnen]

Topographic information throughout most of Canada -at least the more hospitable zones - can be found at the government's site:

http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/topo/map

I find it slow, and it only gets down to a small visible window at a meaningful scale, but it's all there if you're patient and know what you want to look at.  I think it zooms to 1:20000, with topographic lines, spot heights, significant wetlands and forested areas, gravel pits, individual buildings (not necessarily houses), roads, trails, transmission lines, pipelines, etc.