New Canadians learn building a home can be a time-consuming and costly process

A local family is hopeful after the City of Cambridge granted a one-year building permit extension for their new home. 

Salah Rabba, along with his wife, parents, and siblings decided to purchase a vacant lot in Cambridge, a family dream since moving from Palestine to make a new life in Canada.

Rabba says with the house market being sky-high, builders and corporate companies are making it difficult for average everyday families to compete.

“During the process of building our home, and because we ran into many obstacles with the City of Cambridge and Energy+, my family and I decided to sell the lot and everything on it. We received an offer from a developer, but fortunately the offer fell apart and the sales agreement did not go through,” Rabba said.

“Our dream of owning a home almost vanished.”

This all came after the family purchased a vacant lot on Bechtel Street in Cambridge.

“We are just average people, but a tight knit family. We had a small business and we sold it about two years ago. We decided to buy a vacant lot in Cambridge and build our home on it.,” Rabba said.

“We thought it would be more economical to own a house instead of renting. With the help of my dad who has more than 15 years experience in building houses back home, my family and I decided to build a house instead of renting or buying,” Rabba said.

The family submitted an application for a building permit for two semi-detached homes in April last year and just recently received the occupancy permit for one of the two houses.

“My family moved to the new house in November. The other house is still unfinished because we didn’t have the money to complete it just yet due to unforeseen circumstances and changes in pricing,” Rabba said.

“It goes without saying that we suffered a great deal during the pandemic, shortage of materials, prices through the roof on wood, basic materials for building, and delays in processing.”

While building, Rabba submitted an application to sever the lot into five smaller lots.

“The City of Cambridge approved the application for severance, with pending conditions to fulfill,” Rabba said.

The city’s deadline to satisfy these conditions was last week, at which time a one-year extension was given, according to the City of Cambridge.

One condition was a clearance letter from Energy+, the hydro company provider.

“There is a hydro pole located near the corner of our lot. The hydro pole itself is located outside the lot. We hired a surveyor to do a legal survey and the survey confirmed that the hydro pole is outside the boundary lines of our lot,” Rabba said.  

“As a result, we were forced to initiate an application to register the pole on our lot and create an easement for it.”

A surveyor, a lawyer and an architect had to be involved to create the easement.

“It was a lengthy, painful and costly process,” Rabba said.  

“In August, I inquired about the charges to service the future severed lots by Energy+ and they emailed me back stating it will be around $10,000 – $20,000 and this was a ballpark only. On Dec. 7, the estimate was between $66,700+HST and $75,000. What happened to the initial ballpark estimate of $10-20,000?” Rabba said.

Last week, Energy+ reduced the estimate to $29,000. Energy+ has approved the easement letter condition.

A spokesperson for the company said that Energy+ reduced the deposit from $66,000 to $29,000 by removing Rock Removal charges and that the deposit fee is for servicing future lots and is a normal cost to develop the property.

“The deposit of $29,000 was agreed to by the customer. He also has the option of arranging a letter of credit. Energy+ staff have spent a lot of time explaining the severance process to him, which is very complicated given he is not a developer,” Energy+ said.

Rabba says he lives in a lovely neighbourhood.

“We talk to our neighbours on a daily basis and most of them want and wish to develop, renovate or improve their properties. Now, they are thinking twice.”