Section 01
The three documents compared
The Real Property Report is a legal survey plan: a surveyor measures the parcel and the improvements on it, then illustrates their position relative to the boundaries, including encroachments, easement locations and setback distances. It is signed and dated, and it describes the property as it stood on the day of survey.
The compliance certificate is a municipal review of that plan. The City reviews the siting shown on the RPR against the current Zoning Bylaw and relevant permits, then emails a Compliance Certificate Report that either states the siting complies or identifies outstanding permits and the steps required for an encroachment. It is a report issued by the City, not a stamp applied to the survey, and it says nothing about construction, condition or safety.
Lot grading concerns the shaped surface of the lot: whether the grading carried out matched the approved plan for the site and whether that grading was certified and accepted. It is a drainage-and-surface question, separate from both the survey and the bylaw review, and it is the one most often forgotten on a house that has been extensively landscaped.
Three authors, three questions, three dates. Any of them can be current while another is stale.
Section 02
Why the two dates do most of the work
A survey and the City review of it each describe a moment, and they carry separate dates: the surveyor's signed survey date, and the date of the City Compliance Certificate Report. Anything constructed, extended, replaced or relocated afterwards — a garage, a deck, a pergola, a pool enclosure, a fence, an addition — is outside what the document addresses, even though the document still looks authoritative.
This matters more at the exceptional end of the market, where properties accumulate site works: retaining structures, outdoor kitchens, sport courts, secondary buildings. The useful question is never whether an RPR exists, but whether the RPR reflects the house and the site as they stand today.
Section 03
Where an RPR does not apply
A conventional condominium unit is defined by the condominium plan rather than by a parcel survey, so an RPR in the ordinary sense does not attach to it. The equivalent enquiry runs through the registered plan, the unit boundaries it defines, and the corporation's records for common property and exclusive-use areas.
Bare land condominium arrangements sit differently again, and acreage parcels raise surveying questions of their own, including older descriptions and improvements sited far from boundaries. In each case the right question is which document actually defines the boundary for this ownership form.
Section 04
A property-specific request workflow
Ask the seller, through your representative and in writing, for the most recent Real Property Report and the matching City Compliance Certificate Report, and for the lot grading certificate or inspection approval or a statement of the grading approval status. Note both the survey date and the City review date, along with the grading record date. Then compare the survey drawing against the property as you have seen it, and list every improvement that does not appear on it.
Where the list is not empty, the options are an updated survey followed by a new municipal compliance review, confirmation from the City about the item in question, or a negotiated allocation of that risk in the contract, decided with your lawyer. Where the grading status is unresolved, ask the City what its records show for the lot rather than accepting a general assurance.
Keep the requests, the dates and the responses together in one file. If a document cannot be produced, the written record of the attempt is itself part of your position.
Section 05
What none of these documents prove
None of them addresses construction quality, workmanship, structural adequacy, mechanical systems or present physical condition. A Compliance Certificate Report is not an inspection, and it is not a statement that the house is well built or that everything inside it was permitted.
None of them replaces title. Easements and covenants are registered interests read from the title register and the instruments behind it; an RPR may illustrate where an easement runs, but it does not tell you what the easement permits.
None of them predicts drainage performance. A certified grade describes a shaped surface accepted at a point in time, not how water behaves on the site during an extreme event years later.