As we move toward project completion, I am going to put together a post on all the new stuff we encountered during this project, as well as old lessons that could have been better learned.  One that comes to mind right away is to leave more time for the land title and survey processes to make their way back through City Hall.

Starting the subdivision process in February to achieve a July closing date wasn't long enough.  To any casual observer, six months is a tremendously long time to get paperwork exercises finished. In Calgary, it does appear that these processes drag on.  A condition of the lawyers and bankers is to have the survey work stamped for compliance, and on new builds the City takes about a working week to deal with that.  

This means that once you have the subdivision complete, you have to get the new survey work prepared, and finally send it back to the City for the compliance stamp.  This will take a few weeks and if you are not right on top of it, or very early, it will not be done by the closing date.  

If you don't have the paperwork ready for the closing date, a lot of grief and un-needed hardship can ensue.  Next time I will get that subdivision done sooner...actually I probably will not.  If you have financing on the property, getting the subdivision done can be a real problem.  You seem to need to get the financing after the subdivision, or hope that the bank will allow a subdivision with the loan in place.  This is a difficult matter, and I don't know how to proceed.  I will have to give my banker a call and see what he says.  I have looked into these matters before, but didn't find out what I needed to know.