Cobourg Real Estate Lawyers

Taking down walls can compromise your home’s structural stability. Consequently, altering your interior, erecting walls, or removing partitions to change a room’s size or use all require a building permit. 

Creating an open floor plan can make your home seem more spacious. It’s also far less private. Children have more room to romp, it’s true – and to bump into furniture or get underfoot when you’re cooking. Those grating kitchen noises and odours may be even more irritating without any separation. 

Furnishing and lighting open spaces also takes more thought. Will you place seating in the far corner, near the windows overlooking the garden, or is that where you bring in groceries, the dog, and kids? Where will you put your office or reading nook?

In contrast, dividing walls give rooms definition, and help keep stuff organized. Besides, you’ll need some way to hold up the roof. Hiring an architect, interior designer, or experienced home contractor can ensure you plan a redesign that makes it past town bylaw and inspection requirements.

Good for you for knowing naturally occurring uranium in soil and rock is a potential health hazard. Fortunately, concentrations in most homes are small enough not to be a problem. You are wise to check, just in case. The odourless radioactive gas is the second leading cause of lung cancer in Canada.

Radon can only be detected by special monitors, and can creep into your home through foundation cracks, crawl spaces, floor drains, or any opening where soil contacts your home. A professional home inspector can measure radon levels before you buy. 

Post move-in, you can monitor your home with a cheap mail-in kit from a local hardware store. Step it up with an easily installed, permanent radon monitor for under $300. That will allow you to make regular manual readings, or monitor your home’s radon levels through wireless transmissions to your cell phone or home computer.

You can try, but Cobourg is more likely to plant trees than take them down. (That strip of grass in front of your home is actually town property.) Trees cover nearly 28% of Cobourg, storing around 188,857 tonnes of pollutants. The town even has its own Urban Forest Management Plan. To get permission to remove a tree fairly well requires it be diseased or dangerous, like about to topple over due to old age or seriously obstructing traffic.

Yes, if your home has a heritage designation. The town has a heritage colour palette for owners who paint and repaint heritage buildings or their trim. No, if it is in the heritage registry, but not officially designated a historic property. 

Cobourg has over 760 homes of historical importance. How do you tell the difference? 

Homes that define, maintain, or support Cobourg’s character may be added to the historic register if  they are in a designated Heritage Conservation District, or heritage designation has been pursued. Cobourg’s historic homes have physical, functional, visual, or historic links to the town.    

While your home may not be designated, if it has cultural heritage value or interest, it may still be in the register. For example, if your home is an early example of an architectural style, the design has historic merit, or the craftsman who built it was significant to the town. 

You can check the register on the town’s website.