Craig Johnston (L) Mike Thomson
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LTSA: Trusted Resource to Help Notaries Serve BC’s Diverse Communities
hey say money makes the world go round and economic development puts this notion into practice, driving land-use decisions and where people choose to reside. Globally, urban centres are the economic growth engines that attract youth and working-age populations from near and far with their abundant opportunities and social investments. In 2014, 54 percent of the world’s population resided in urban areas.1 In BC, this urbanization trend is more extreme. • In 1951, 68% of BC residents were urbanites. • In 2016, that figure increased to 86%, with 60% residing in the Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley regions, i.e., approximately 2% of the land area in BC.2 • In fact, BC was the most urbanized province in the country in 2016 and its rural population has been declining and aging.3 1 https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/publications/ files/wup2014-highlights.pdf
2 https://georgiastrait.org/issues/urbanization/ 3 http://www.vancouversun.com/business/ barbara+yaffe+urbanization+trend+only+ intensify/11738824/story.html
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Although BC’s urban areas generate a greater volume of property transactions, the vast majority of land in our province is rural. Those lands are often Crown lands that have not been surveyed. Much of rural BC that has been alienated from the Crown to private interests lies within the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). Dealing with development proposals on or even transfers of land within the ALR adds different requirements to those property transactions.
Although BC’s urban areas generate a greater volume of property transactions, the vast majority of land in our province is rural. The many smaller towns, municipalities, and regional districts in rural areas tend to conduct business in different ways and use different sets of information than urban areas, which may present additional differences that must be understood. Interests stemming from industrial or commercial activities centred on natural resources may also bring different considerations into play when completing rural area transactions. While the same requirements apply and the same forms are used to complete property transactions within the land title system in BC, the details The Society of Notaries Public of British Columbia
in each filing can differ significantly depending on where the property is located. BC Notaries can rely on the Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia (LTSA) to provide a consistent experience no matter where your practice leads you.
Starting from the Ground Up When it comes to land title matters, everything starts from the ground up with land surveys. Land survey plans document the legal boundaries of properties and certain interests in land. In urban centres, parcels are generally smaller and often the subject of a re-survey, where the accuracy of parcel measurements tends to be diligently scrutinized. In rural areas, the size of each parcel is often larger; it is more common for parcels to include an ambulatory natural boundary. Certainly BC’s major urban centres have connections to bodies of water, but those tend to be industrial or civic properties rather than residential or family holdings. Of course there are exceptions, for example, many waterfront homes in West Vancouver where the natural boundary can be very difficult to determine, given the intense historic man-made manipulation of the shoreline. Land-use differences also manifest themselves through the various statutes and regulations that inform property transactions. In urban Volume 27 Number 3 Fall 2018
