Calgary buyers and sellers often ask me about Real Property Reports (RPRs) and title insurance, and I think a lot of buyers and even some agents treat RPR and title insurance as interchangeable. They are not. One tells you what you are actually buying. The other just pays you if something goes wrong.

A Real Property Report is a survey, done by an Alberta Land Surveyor, that shows exactly where the house, garage, deck, fence, and any other structures sit on the lot. Once the survey is complete, the municipality reviews it and stamps it compliant, or it points out where it is not. If a fence is over the property line, or a shed sits in a utility easement, or an addition was never permitted, an RPR is what brings that to light. You find out before you own it, not after.

Title insurance does none of that. It is a policy. If a boundary problem or a title defect ever costs you money down the road, the policy pays a claim. That is genuinely useful, and I am not against it. But it does not identify anything, and it does not fix anything. It compensates you for a risk you already agreed to take on.

That is the distinction I keep coming back to. An RPR eliminates the risk, or at least tells you clearly what the risk is so you can deal with it before closing. Title insurance just helps you pay for the risk after the fact. One is prevention. The other is compensation.

This matters at the negotiating table too. When a seller does not provide a current RPR, buyers are right to expect something in return, whether that is a reduced price or the seller covering the cost of a new survey. You are being asked to accept an unknown, insured or not, and that unknown has value. I have seen buyers accept title insurance without asking for anything back, and I think that is a mistake. If you are the one absorbing the risk, you should be the one who benefits from the discount.

My background is in construction, over 30 years of it, and it changes what I notice when I walk a property. A fence line that looks newer than the rest of the yard. Siding on an addition that does not quite match. A deck that sits close enough to the property line to raise a question. It does not replace a survey. It just tells me when it is worth insisting on one.

If you are buying or selling a home in Calgary and are not sure which way to go on this, I am happy to walk through it with you directly.

Shane Edlund
REALTOR®, CIR Realty
403-827-7809 | sedlund@cirrealty.ca