Here’s how the Assignment Sale works in Toronto Real Estate

You may have heard the term “Assignment Sale” lately as it has become really popular with speculative condo investors.

Assignment Sales are defined as follows: The Assigning or Selling of your rights to purchase a property.

To clarify, you’re not actually selling the property. Since the Assignor (Seller) hasn’t taken possession yet (usually because it’s not built or has not registered yet), they are simply assigning the rights to the Assignee (Buyer).

Here’s an example: If I walked in to a condo sales centre,  signed and bought a pre-construction unit from the floor plans I would have the right to purchase said unit when it was constructed and registered. An Assignment Sale is when I take that paper that I signed, my right to purchase, and sell it to someone else; The Assignee, for a certain amount. To break it down, if I agreed to buy the condo for $300,000, then found a Buyer aka Assignee, the Assignee has the right to purchase said unit for $300,000 but he/she has paid me a premium on top of the $300,000 for that right.

A client just went through one of these for a condo that he had bought pre construction. He, as usual, got in over his head with purchases and decided to assign a unit in order to free up some cash to make the deposits on another place that he had purchased pre construction. After spending some time spreading the word and marketing the property I received a call from a colleague saying he had a buyer for me and we eventually made the deal happen. Here is how I structured the deal to make it work for my client:

He had paid $356,400 for this unit (I should say, he had agreed to pay that amount when it was ready a year or so from now).  He had made initial deposits of $53,750, or 15% of the purchase price. My goal was to recover as much of that now for my client. Next, the buyer aka Assignee agreed to purchase said unit from my client for $380,000. What this means is that he will eventually purchase the unit from the developer for $356,400 but give my client $23,600 for the right to do so (Total to the Buyer is $380,000).

So now the Assignee owes the initial deposit $53,750 plus the built in profit of $23,600 all totaling $77,350. Most people don’t have that kind of money lying around but since the money was needed right away we worked out a plan where he would pay the initial deposit of $53,750 now (borrowed from his parents) and the remainder of the cash from his mortgage when the condo was built and ready to register. We were lucky because the Assignee had the ability to come up with the cash.

Sometimes when the Assignee doesn’t have the option of paying out the Assignor it can be agreed that all the money will be transferred when the condo is ready and registered. An Assignor would likely agree to the latter only if the profit margins are much higher and the money is not needed right away. In this case since my client needed to be paid out now he accepted the small profit and was able to cash out and pay for his most recent purchase.

Assignment Sales, unlike resale transactions can get quite complicated. It is very important that you have an experienced Spring Realty Broker to work out the contract and an experienced real estate Lawyer to help mitigate risk for the client. I have been involved in hundreds of Assignment Sale transactions and with the help of Feld/Kalia Team of lawyers we get the job done right. Contact Us to get started.

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