Mortgage 101 – Real Estate Law 101 with Danielle MacLean

Expert and Real Estate Lawyer, Danielle MacLean, from DCL Law joins Todd Veinotte, and Clinton Wilkins to share insights on navigating real estate transactions. They emphasized the importance of education, organization, and flexibility in preventing unexpected problems. They discuss the significance of having the right professionals on your team and being aware of the legal aspects involved in real estate transactions. By prioritizing these factors, individuals can successfully navigate the transaction process and avoid potential pitfalls.

Todd Veinotte
You’re listening to Mortgage 101, your guide to homeownership with Clinton Wilkins and myself, Todd Veinotte.

Clinton Wilkins
On today’s episode, we’re joined by real estate lawyer Danielle MacLean from DCL Law.

Todd Veinotte
And today we’re covering the basics of real estate law!

Clinton Wilkins
What to expect when you’re buying a home!

Todd Veinotte
Preparing for, and responding to unexpected problems in transaction process.

Clinton Wilkins
And more expert advice from Danielle. We have Danielle MacLean, she is our real estate lawyer practicing in Darmouth at DCL Law. And we’re going to do a deep dive about, real estate law, and how that practice works. And just some misconceptions that clients don’t really think about. As a mortgage broker, it’s the most amazing job ever. Maybe the realtor does a great job. But then sometimes, clients, when they get to the lawyer, they don’t know what they’re doing. And so we’re going to talk about, some misconceptions.

Todd Veinotte
Before all of that, Danielle, let everybody know a little bit about yourself, what drew you to this sphere of law? Why real estate law?

Danielle MacLean
You know what, I chose real estate law because it’s happy law. Everybody’s in a good mood, you’re buying a house, you’re getting money. I practiced in some other areas, and this is where I landed.

Todd Veinotte
Very nice! What are some of the challenges to the job? Because everything’s got its ups and downs – I’m sure with that is some challenges, right?

Danielle MacLean
Oh! Every job has its challenges. I don’t think anyone has a perfect job. Not saying I don’t love my job, but there’s, days that I don’t like it. Yeah. So I think it’s like anything, there’s good days, and there’s more good days than bad days.

Todd Veinotte
Yeah. Okay. Fair enough.

Clinton Wilkins
I think that’s really, really what matters.

Todd Veinotte
I guess what I was trying to get at Danielle was that closing from time to time, things go wrong. This is about education and awareness. This is something we’ve always talked about on the show. So we want to empower people with knowledge. What advice do you give people, in bullet points? These are some things you should know, if you’re buying a house, at closing point, what should you know?

Danielle MacLean
I’m just gonna say this is my legal disclaimer. So of course, we’re just going to give you a little bit of general information, not legal advice. So if you have any questions, feel free to contact my office or your lawyer. So I would say the biggest thing for any client that’s doing any kind of real estate transaction is you need to be organized, and you need to be prepared. So it’s not going to go perfectly 90% of the time. So you need to be flexible, and you need to have those ducks, in a row. And you need to have the right professionals around you. And you need to know when to ask questions and have the right people to ask the questions to.

Clinton Wilkins
100%, I can echo that. Just like not every mortgage broker is the same, not every radio host is the same. Not every lawyer is the same. I think that’s really important. Find the right people on your team. But also know, that a big transaction, like a mortgage, or a real estate transaction with a lawyer; not everything is always going to be perfect. And you need to be flexible, and you need to take advice. I think that’s the big thing. What would you say is the number one thing that clients don’t expect is going to happen, when they’re buying a home?

Danielle MacLean
Well, I would say most closing days, your walkthrough day, is not going to be perfect. So you have to have those reasonable expectations. If you’re buying a used home, you’re going to do a walkthrough of a used home.

Todd Veinotte
Describe a walkthrough, what should you be looking for in a walkthough?

Danielle MacLean
So a walkthrough is kind of your last chance to really raise any issues with the property. So you’re gonna go in with your realtor, and you’re gonna make sure it’s in the same state or better as when you looked at it before. All their stuff is gone. In a perfect world the appliances are clean, the lawn is mowed. People have different ideas about what is clean and what is fixed. So you know, a lot of times on closing day we end up in a lot of back and forth over that. And you know, I’m always saying to my clients, nothing is going to be perfect. We need to be flexible if you want to get in to this house.

Todd Veinotte
It always amazes me, when I think about it, because I bought and sold a number of times. And the day before you think, somebody’s buying this property, and I’m buying that property, and probably the tentacles could go out for five or eight or 10 deals. You think yourself all of that stuff has to flow properly. That’s stressful, right?

Danielle MacLean
It is and the advice that we give to our clients a lot is when you’re trying to buy and sell, to not to do it on the same day. You’re asking for trouble because your buyer has until the end of the day to get that mortgage money to you. If you’ve got closing problems, or if they’ve got lending problems, then you’re going to be in trouble. And you’re right the next person might be trying to buy and you do have that domino . So ideally, you’re going you’re going to buy first borrow something, we call it a bridge that your your broker your mortgage specialists can or can organize for you. So you’re going to borrow on that sale to use it for your purchase. So you’re not in that panic, trying to close everything on that same day.

Clinton Wilkins
And I love the idea of a bridge, especially, when you’re moving, and maybe you need to do some renovations, I think it makes a lot of sense. Now, not every lender will do a bridge. And depending on what your dates are, sometimes you’re homeless, sometimes you don’t have a home for a couple days. And I mean, that works as well. But I agree. The sale and the purchase on the same day, that’s really tough.

Danielle MacLean
Every time it goes sideways. And I feel terrible for people and we try to warn them and sometimes it’s unavoidable. And that’s what you what you have to do. But it’s really something to think hard about, in particular, if you’re selling in another province, and you’re trying to buy here. You got to remember the time change. So if I’m waiting on money coming from Vancouver, then we’re gonna have a problem.

Clinton Wilkins
You just need to assume that it’s going to be delayed. The other thing is, I always tell clients, if you’re closing this day, don’t expect you’re gonna get the keys until five o’clock and don’t plan on moving in. Yeah, don’t have BELL or Eastlink there at 10am to try to hook up the internet!

Danielle MacLean
That is a conversation that we have in all of our meetings, because people do have the expectation that at 9am, when they do a walkthrough, they’re gonna get keys. But you’re not gonna get keys until your seller has your money. You’re not going to get that money until the lender funds it. So depending on the lender, that can be anywhere near first thing in the morning to later on in the day. And then maybe we’ve got closing walkthroughs, maybe we’re waiting on insurance. You could be waiting on the deed from the other lawyer. In the wintertime, there’s been times that I’ve been driving over to other lawyers offices to drop off packages because the couriers aren’t running. So these are the things that you need to think about.

Todd Veinotte
Recently, of course, we had this big tech outage. I don’t know if you guys were affected by that in any way shape or form.

Danielle MacLean
Yes, some lenders were delayed funding, we did manage to close everything. Luckily, it wasn’t really a busy day for real estate transactions for us, but we were late getting our mortgages funded. So you don’t know what’s going to happen. If you’ve got a day when there’s big power outages or something, then that could absolutely impact it.

Clinton Wilkins
There could be fires, there could be floods, there could be outages, anything could happen.

Danielle MacLean
Well, the flood and fires, we had, we had closings delayed to two three weeks later.

Clinton Wilkins
And I think these are things that you need to take, into account in your mind. And you know, really, anything can happen. Now, obviously, I think 99% are usually okay.

Todd Veinotte
It’s amazing how smoothly it does go most of the time.

Clinton Wilkins
Very rarely does a closing happen at 9 or 10am.

Danielle MacLean
Most of our closings, I would say, happen somewhere between two and four o’clock. Generally it’s going to happen on closing day, unless something goes really sideways. But it does happen sometimes but again, that goes back to having to be flexible. So if you want in the door and you’re fighting over $50 credit to move garbage. But it happens because people really dig their heels in, I get that and it’s a very emotional transaction.

Clinton Wilkins
It’s not just business. For me, it’s business. I get to do this every single day and not have the emotional connection to real estate. But I also remember that this is people’s home and even when they’re selling it, there’s that emotional connection. It’s like, well, everyone thinks that their house is the best and it’s perfect and whatever. Where the person that’s buying it from you may not be on the same page.

Danielle MacLean
This is where a great realtor comes in handy too. Right? A great Realtor can really stick handle a lot of those issues. So if you’ve got an experienced realtor that you trust and you have a good rapport with. A lot of times they’ll clean all this stuff up before it even reaches the lawyers. They’ll say, oh there was a problem, we fixed it. This is where we’re gonna go. So that’s really important too.

Clinton Wilkins
Bringing up a good point I’m gonna interrupt here for a sec. Private sales! They are the probably the bane of my existence. So you think private sales are gonna be easy, breezy. They are the hardest.

Todd Veinotte
We’ll save that for the next segment.

Clinton Wilkins
We’ll keep Danielle around.

Todd Veinotte
She’s sticking around. She’s not going anywhere!