Sell Your Cottage in Ontario Fast!

Thinking about selling your cottage or waterfront home in Ontario? Whether it's in the Kawartha Lakes, Muskoka, Trent Lakes, Bracebridge, or Tobermory, we make selling quick and simple.

We buy cottages, waterfront homes, island properties, and lakefront lots across Ontario in as-is condition:

Yes. A tired septic is a frequent reason a cottage sale stalls, and it doesn't stop ours. Septic systems in Ontario fall under Part 8 of the Ontario Building Code, and installing or replacing one needs a permit from the local approval authority, which may be the municipality, the public health unit or the conservation authority depending on where the cottage is.

Plenty of older cottages have systems that predate any permit on file: a rusted steel tank, a homemade leaching pit, or a bed sized for weekend use decades ago. Soggy ground over the bed, odours and gurgling drains are the usual warning signs, and several lake-country townships run re-inspection programs that can end in an order to repair or replace.

A financed buyer's lender will often want records, a pump-out and an inspection, and a new system on a small, rocky waterfront lot is expensive and slow to permit. We don't ask for any of it and deal with the septic after closing.

Not to sell to us. A conventional buyer and their lender will usually want proof the water is safe to drink, which is where a shallow dug well, a shore well or a line straight into the lake causes trouble.

In Ontario, private well owners can have samples tested for bacteria (E. coli and coliforms) free through Public Health Ontario's laboratory, using bottles from the local health unit. Testing for minerals or chemicals, such as arsenic or uranium in parts of the Canadian Shield, goes to an accredited private lab. Lake water needs treatment before anyone drinks it. If you have results, share them; if not, we'll buy anyway.

On many Ontario lakes and rivers, the original survey reserved a strip of land along the water for a road that was never built. This shoreline road allowance is typically 66 feet (one surveyor's chain) wide, and on a lot of waterfront properties the municipality, not the cottage owner, still owns that strip between your lot line and the lake. Your dock, deck, boathouse or even part of the cottage may sit on it.

Owners can usually apply to the municipality to stop up, close and buy the unopened allowance in front of their lot. Expect an application fee, a survey, legal costs, notice to neighbours and a council by-law, often over many months; Crown shoreline goes through the province instead. Buyers' lawyers flag an open allowance, sometimes late in a deal. We can buy with it unresolved and deal with the township or the province ourselves after closing.

It matters to lenders and insurers, not to whether we'll make an offer. Most cottages sit on a year-round municipal road, a road the municipality only maintains seasonally, a private lane kept up by a road association that collects fees and hires the plow, or no road at all.

Seasonal and private roads can limit winter emergency access, complicate insurance and restrict permits for year-round use. Water-access islands add marina parking and a barge for anything heavy. Some lenders won't finance these properties at all, which shrinks the buyer pool. We buy all four kinds, and can close in mid-winter with the lane snowed in.

It changes who can buy it on the open market. A three-season cottage usually sits on piers or posts, has little insulation under the floor, and has its plumbing drained every fall. A winterized cottage has an insulated envelope, buried or heat-traced water lines and a reliable heat source. Lenders and insurers treat the two differently, and many insurers want a WETT inspection on a woodstove before they'll cover the place.

We buy both, even closed up for the season with the water off.

Every owner on title has to sign, so start by getting everyone to agree on selling. Siblings who inherited together, or friends who bought as tenants in common, each own a share, and if a co-owner has died, their estate trustee signs in their place. When co-owners can't agree, a court application under Ontario's Partition Act is the slow, costly last resort.

One written cash offer with a closing date everyone can live with often settles things faster than a listing debate, and we'll work around probate timelines.

Usually, if the cottage isn't your principal residence. A second property generally triggers a taxable capital gain on sale, measured against your adjusted cost base: what you paid plus capital improvements such as a new septic, dock or addition, so keep those receipts.

A family can designate only one property as its principal residence for each year, but the cottage can be the designated one for some years if that saves more tax overall. The sale and any designation are reported to the CRA, and an accountant can confirm today's inclusion rate and the best split.

Yes. Furniture, the canoe and boat, the dock sections, tools and the woodpile can all stay. List anything that's included as chattels in the Agreement of Purchase and Sale, and transfer any boat licence or trailer ownership at closing.

One thing we don't do is take over rental bookings. If the cottage has been rented to guests, you honour the stays booked before closing or cancel and refund them; no reservations carry over to us after we own it.

We're familiar with property values across Ontario's most popular cottage regions and can provide you with a fair, competitive cash offer.

We purchase cottages on Sturgeon Lake, Balsam Lake, Cameron Lake, and Pigeon Lake, as well as Chemong Lake, Shadow Lake, Head Lake, Canal Lake, Four Mile Lake, and Mitchell Lake. We understand local Pigeon Lake property values and other Kawartha waterfront trends, allowing us to make an informed cash offer.

From Buckhorn Lake to Big Bald Lake, Gold Lake, Catchacoma Lake, and Mississauga Lake, we know the market and property values in Trent Lakes and can give you a quick, simple sale.