Glitch connected to land titles website could prove costly for homebuyers

Alberta home buyers may have to pay more to close real estate deals after the province’s land titles portal was knocked offline following a weekend computer update.

The glitch comes during the last week of the month, which sees the majority of real estate deals come to fruition, further adding to the concerns by those in the industry.

According to Service Alberta, a routine systems upgrade took place Sunday evening, which resulted in a system outage and prompted the province to take the unusual step of closing its Calgary and Edmonton land titles offices on Tuesday.

“Support teams are currently working to rectify the issue as quickly as possible,” Service Alberta spokesman Neil Levine said Tuesday.

“Albertans can be confident that their personal information is secure. The service disruption is a result of a routine systems update that interfered with data processing.”

However, it remains unclear when the system will be back online, which could force those set to close real estate deals to jump over some extra hurdles and potentially spend a bit more money than originally planned.

Ryan MacKay, owner and founder of MacKay Real Property Law, said depending on how long the system is down, it may force those in the industry to get creative.

“It’s kind of an ugly wrinkle for everybody,” he said.

“For consumers, it means the regular way of doing business is no longer available and we need to find alternative means to close deals.”

He said home buyers can avoid any difficulties by purchasing title insurance — which could cost between $175 and $200, an amount that rises incrementally on homes valued at more than $450,000 — allowing a deal to close as normal with the insurance picking up any lingering issues with closure.

The other option, said MacKay, would be for the homebuyer to directly pay the seller daily interest or rent on the property instead of paying it to the lender, which he said wouldn’t necessarily cost more, but would create additional logistics.

Bob Jablonski, president of the Alberta Real Estate Association, which represents some 10,500 realtors in the province, said depending on the length of the outage, some consumers may be stung financially.

“It may cost consumers hundreds of dollars or more because of the outage,” he said.

“The bottom line is you need to communicate with your lawyers if you’re a buyer or a seller.

“We’re confident realtors and lawyers will take a professional approach.”

Levine said updates on the outage will be posted to servicealberta.ca and on Twitter @ServiceAlberta and there will be extended hours when the shuttered offices are reopened.

“We expect services will be resumed soon and when systems are up and running again, land titles offices will have extended hours to serve Albertans,” he said.

It may cost consumers hundreds of dollars or more because of the outage.