Company to list drug dens
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A new Ottawa company will list homes that housed former drug operations on the first registry of its kind in the country.
HomeProof, set to launch next month, will provide insurance claim information, as well as the criminal pasts of houses to realtors — for a fee.
Similar to how detailed car history reports can be compiled, home addresses from across Canada will be able to be searched against millions of national records to offer comprehensive claims data.
The real estate industry has been demanding such an expanded registry for a long time, said HomeProof president and CEO Alexandre Morin.
Ottawa realtors want a local registry upgraded as well — after years of lobbying, the registry erases online information after only three months — which they argue is not long enough.
“People buy homes every day with their eyes closed,” said Morin.
“It’s the biggest investment of your life.”
Morin, who worked in the automotive industry for years, discovered a niche when he found it was easier to get histories of cars for sale than homes.
The database will include claim information on everything from fires to floods as well as any secret drug lab and marijuana grow-op histories.
For three years, Morin has worked on the initiative with municipalities and police forces across the country. Some like Winnipeg, more eager to sign on board than others, like Ottawa.
More than 25 cities have supported the efforts but Ottawa officials are still in discussions with HomeProof, according to Morin, although he said it “looks promising.”
He is also in discussions with the OPP.
Morin said some police agencies are concerned over a list being out on the Internet but HomeProof will not be accessible to just anyone. The information comes with a price and for now will only be available to realtors (or other authorized representatives, such as lawyers or home inspectors).
The fee was not disclosed.
However, the public will be able to pull the report from their own house.
Some home histories will date back to 2000, with plans to go back as far as possible but information on the database will not expire, said Morin.
The average cost to remediate a former drug den is more than $40,000, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
A tentative launch date is set for late February, with Morin planning to expand his database as much as possible.
danielle.bell@sunmedia.ca
@DBellReporting
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