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How To Use British Columbia's Land Owner Transparency Registry

British Columbia has a long history of financial crime, with much of it tied to real estate. After the problem became too big to ignore, the Province convened an expert panel to examine the prevalence of money laundering in our real estate market, who returned with their findings in May 2019. That same month, following one of the panel's recommendations, the Province introduced and passed the Land Owner Transparency Act, which established the Land Owner Transparency Registry (LOTR), a publicly-accessible and searchable registry of land owners that was the first of its kind in Canada.The Land Owner Transparency Registry, maintained by the Land Title and Survey Authority (LTSA), launched in November 2020 before then becoming public in April 2021, but it took some time for land owners to come into compliance and for the registry to mature. The LOTR is now substantially more useful, and particularly so after the Province dropped the $5.25 per search fee beginning in April 2024. Since then, STOREYS has regularly incorporated the LOTR in our reporting, whether it be to identify the real owners behind a rezoning application or to confirm whether a property has quietly changed hands. Below is our guide on how to use the LOTR and some tips and tricks we've picked up along the way. The Land Owner Transparency RegistryAfter registering for a free myLTSA Explorer account, log in to the Land Owner Transparency Registry, where you be presented with a search bar that allows you to search by individual, by corporation, or by parcel identifier (PID). The Land Owner Transparency Registry homepage. Because real estate is often held under numbered companies or entities that do not include the name of the company that owns it, searching by PID is usually the most effective method. The PID for any given parcel — including strata units and airspace parcels — can be found via BC Assessment's property assessment search tool by searching the address. (Note: BC Assessment only recognizes legal addresses, which may be different than the address that's used / listed publicly. In these cases, we'd recommend finding a nearby property, then using the parcel map at the bottom of the page to find the property you're looking for.) As an example, we will use CF Pacific Centre, whose website lists 701 W Georgia Street as its address. However, the legal address is actually 609 Granville Street. After finding the parcel, the PID (010-240-004) can be found under the legal description. Although CF Pacific Centre's public address is 701 W Georgia, the legal address is 609 Granville, and the PID is: 010-240-004.With the PID, return to the LOTR, tick the box to search by PID, and enter the PID. The LOTR should then spit out a result with a PID that matches the one you searched. Tick the box and you'll get a payment pop-up (for $0.00). Clicking the "Order to View" button will then bring you to a confirmation page with an option to "View and Download Order #XXXXX." (Note: The LOTR only includes properties that are owned by corporations. Searching for a residential home will usually not generate any results, unless it happens to be owned under a holding company. Properties that are owned by government are also not included.) The Land Owner Transparency Registry result page for CF Pacific Centre.Looking at the registry entry, the entity that is listed under "Reporting Body" is the legal owner of the property, which is sometimes also referred to as the registered owner, because they are the owner listed on the land title. The entities under "Name of Interest Holders or Settlor" are then the beneficial owners of the property — the owners of the registered owner. In our example, according to the Land Owner Transparency Registry, the legal owner of 609 Granville Street is Pacific Centre Limited, while the beneficial owner is VanPC LP and The Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited. In this example, because Cadillac Fairview (CF) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, CF is identified as the "Settlor of a Relevant Trust" under "Type of Interest." The other listed beneficial owner is VanPC LP. The name is ambiguous, but clicking on the name reveals that VanPC LP has a head office address of Suite 2400 at 16 York Street in Toronto, which matches the address of the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario (IMCO). In fact, IMCO's website notes that it has an ownership stake in CF Pacific Centre. VanPC LP, one of the beneficial owners of Pacific Centre Limited.Tips and ObservationsWhen initially searching a PID, sometimes the LOTR will turn up multiple results for the same PID. Not all of them are current, but unfortunately there is no indicator of which one is the most current.Sometimes the LOTR will show the registered owner, but no beneficial owner. In these situations, there is only the registered office address to work with.The list of beneficial owners is often the names of individuals, not corporations. These individuals are usually the directors and/or owners of the company that owns the property. (Example: For properties owned by Westbank, the LOTR will list Founder Ian Gillespie and his spouse Stephanie Dong as the beneficial owners, rather than "Westbank.")The "registered office address" is often that of the law firm the owner retained to set up the ownership entity, while the "head office address" is often that of the beneficial owner.Searching the LOTR using the name of a corporation can be useful if you already know the registered owner, as sometimes one holding company owns multiple properties.According to the LTSA, each time there is a change in ownership, the owners are required to make a filing, but it is unclear how quickly the changes are reflected in the search results. Our observations indicate that there is often a lag between when the ownership changes — such as a sale completing — and when the change is reflected on the LOTR.