Buying a House in the GTA This Autumn: the Exterior Checks to Make Before You Close

An accepted offer with a home inspection condition buys you a few days of access to a house you do not own yet. Autumn is the season that makes those days worth the most outdoors. Once the leaves are down you can see the roof edge, the eaves and the ground at the same time — and that overlap does not exist in July, when foliage hides the roofline, or in January, when snow hides everything below it. This is what to look at outside, what to ask the municipality for on paper, and which of it is worth reopening a price over.

Nothing below is legal or real-estate advice, and none of it replaces the inspection you are paying for. It is the exterior half of the job — the part that arrives as bills in the first twelve months of ownership, and the part a buyer can do personally in about forty minutes while the inspector works inside.

What autumn shows that summer and winter both hide

Every season conceals a different half of a property. Summer foliage covers the roof edge, the fascia and the chimney flashing; you can stand at the kerb in July and not be able to say whether the eavestrough is straight. Snow covers the driveway surface, the walkway, the beds, the lawn and the grade against the foundation. Autumn — after the canopy thins and before the first lasting snow — is the short overlap when both halves are visible on the same visit.

• The roofline reads from the ground. Sag in the eavestrough, a section that has pulled away from the fascia, a downspout that ends in mid-air, staining where water has been running down the wall instead of through the trough.
• You can count the trees whose canopy sits over the roof. That count is the annual gutter workload for as long as you own the house, and it is the single most useful number you will take away from the visit.
• A rainy showing is a free drainage test. Water on the day tells you where it goes; a dry lot only tells you where someone thought it would go.
• The lawn and beds are still growing in September. Bare patches, compaction along a path, and beds that have not been touched in two seasons are all visible. By late November everything is dormant and looks the same.
• The driveway and walkway surfaces are uncovered. You can see the cracking and the slope, and you can work out where a winter's snow is going to be pushed and piled.

Ontario does not license home inspectors, and that changes what you ask for

There is no provincial licence to look up. The Home Inspection Act, 2017 was passed and sits on Ontario's e-Laws site carrying a note at the top of the statute: "THIS ACT IS NOT YET IN FORCE. It comes into force on a day to be named by proclamation of the Lieutenant Governor." The consolidation period shown on that page runs from March 2024, so this is the current state of the law, not an old page.

The practical consequence is narrow and worth stating plainly: the scope of your inspection is whatever the individual inspector's contract says it is, because no provincial standard sets it for them. So read the agreement before you book rather than after the report lands, and ask directly which of these is included — walking the roof, scoping the drain line, and an arborist's opinion on any tree. If any of those matter for this address, they are separate bookings with their own lead time, and the condition period is the only window you have to arrange them.

The walk-around: what to do outside while the inspector is inside

Do this in order and take photographs of anything you cannot explain. Photographs taken during the condition period are the only ones you will ever have of the property as the seller kept it.

1. 1Start at the kerb and look upRead the whole roofline in one pass before you get close to anything. Most of what a gutter is about to do wrong is visible from the street — the signs you can see from the ground are a straight sag, a joint that has opened, staining below the trough line, and plant growth in the trough itself.
2. 2Count the canopy over the roofNote how many mature trees overhang the roof, roughly how big they are, and which side of the house they sit on. Trees on the north and west sides usually load the gutters that are hardest to reach. How often the eaves need clearing follows from that canopy rather than from the age of the house.
3. 3Follow every downspout to where it endsSplash block, an extension across the lawn, or a pipe disappearing into the ground. A buried discharge line is the one you cannot inspect and cannot price — put it on the list of questions for the seller, and read what the first heavy autumn rain is actually testing before you decide how much it matters.
4. 4Walk the perimeter looking downNote what the ground does in the first metre out from the wall: soil piled against siding, a garden bed built up higher than the surrounding lawn, a patio or walkway that tips back toward the house, or window wells with no cover and last year's leaves in them.
5. 5Read the driveway and the walkway as winter surfacesSlope, cracking, and — the part that gets forgotten in September — where the snow will physically go. A long driveway with beds on both sides and no open corner is a different job every storm than one with a lawn to push onto.
6. 6Look at window frames and sills, not the glassDirty glass is a cleaning visit. Soft wood at a sill, failed caulking, a sash that has been painted shut, or fogging between the panes of a sealed unit are carpentry and glazing, and they are priced per opening. Count the openings while you are out there.
7. 7Check what has power or gas running to it outdoorsA shed with a light in it, a detached garage with a panel, a gas line stubbed out for a barbecue, a pool heater. Each one is a buried service line on the property, and each one matters later — see the locate section below.
8. 8Stand at the back corner and look at the neighbouring lotsNote whether the neighbouring grades sit higher or lower than this one and where the low point of the block appears to be. You are not measuring anything — you are deciding whether drainage is a question worth putting to the seller in writing.

The tree on the front lawn may not be yours to remove

This is the check that changes decisions. If the plan for the property involves taking down a large tree — the maple leaning over the roof, the spruce shading the whole back garden — that plan needs testing before the condition expires, because across this service area the removal needs a municipal permit first. The thresholds start at 15 cm of trunk diameter, which is a smaller tree than the wording suggests.

Two details in that table are worth reading twice. Mississauga's page states the permit requirement covers trees that are already dead or dying — the tree being a hazard does not remove the paperwork, although the city notes there is no base fee or additional fee for a dead or dying tree. And Burlington's by-law applies only inside the Urban Planning Area Boundary, so two addresses in the same city can sit under different rules.

The cost is published too. Mississauga charges a non-refundable base permit fee of $399.77 including HST, plus $139.72 including HST for each additional healthy tree of 15 cm or more, and gives itself 30 business days to review a complete application. Replacement planting is a condition, with a security deposit set by the city, and if there is no room to replant on the property the owner pays for planting on city land instead. Oakville's page notes that non-compliance with its Private Tree Protection By-law may result in fees and charges under the town's Administrative Penalty By-law 2021-038.

What to ask the municipality while the condition is still open

Municipalities sell a report that tells a buyer what the seller may not. Milton calls it a compliance and property information request, and its page lists exactly what comes back: orders and notices, meaning records of outstanding violations on the property; zoning details including designations, allowed uses and setback regulations; details and status of any minor variances on file; heritage status; and outstanding inspections for issued permits.

That last line is the one to focus on. An outstanding inspection on an issued permit means work was started legitimately and never signed off — the finished basement, the deck, the addition, the second unit. It does not go away at closing; it becomes the new owner's file. Finding it during the condition period is a negotiation. Finding it two years later, when you are the one trying to sell or insure the place, is not.

Oakville runs the same thing under two names. A building compliance report is an official letter from the town covering building permits, work orders, property standards, zoning designation and heritage designation where applicable, requested on a form emailed to the town. Separately, building records themselves are released through a Routine Disclosure of Building Records application for a $60 fee — and here is the catch for a buyer: the town states it can release those records to the owner of the property or their authorized agent. You are neither until closing. If you want the actual permit drawings rather than the summary letter, the seller's written authorization has to be arranged, which means asking for it early enough to be useful.

• Request the compliance report the same day the offer is accepted — these are processed on the municipality's schedule, not yours, and Mississauga's separate tree permit review alone is 30 business days.
• Read the orders and notices section first. An outstanding property standards or lot maintenance order is the cheapest thing on this page to inherit and the easiest to have dealt with before closing.
• Cross-check the outstanding inspections against what you saw outside. A deck, a shed with power, a widened driveway or a finished basement with no matching closed permit is a specific question, not a general worry.
• If a large tree is coming down as part of your plan for the property, ask about the tree permit before you commit to the plan, not after.

If you plan to dig in the first year, the locate comes before the shovel

A fence, a garden bed, a tree, a deck footing, a post for a clothesline — the first year in a new house tends to involve a shovel. In Ontario that requires a locate request to Ontario One Call at least five business days before the digging starts. Their homeowner page is blunt about it: it is free, and it is the law. The system notifies buried infrastructure owners, who send locators to mark their own lines on the property.

What the free service does not cover matters just as much. Ontario One Call marks public infrastructure; privately owned buried lines are the homeowner's responsibility to have marked, and their page names them:

• A gas line running from the house to a barbecue or a pool heater
• Lights or signs on the property
• Electrical lines going out to a shed or a detached garage
• Sewer and septic tanks, systems and piping
• Telecom or electrical lines feeding security cameras

That list is why the walk-around asks you to note what has power or gas running to it outdoors. Every item you counted at the back of the lot is a private line somebody will have to locate and pay for before a post hole goes anywhere near it. If you are hiring the work out, Ontario One Call's own advice is to confirm your contractor has submitted the request — and if you are weighing who to hire for exterior work at all, what "insured" actually covers is worth reading before the first quote.

Which findings are a maintenance list and which are money

The honest answer for most of what you will find outside: it is a list of jobs with published prices, and it is a poor reason to walk away from a house you otherwise want. Being able to sort the list is what makes the two or three items that do matter visible.

The first ninety days after an autumn closing

The order matters more than the effort. Doing these in the wrong sequence means doing several of them twice.

1. Book the eavestrough clearing for after the trees over the roof are bare, not before. A clean gutter under a still-loaded canopy is a gutter you will pay to clean twice — the timing question for a street with mature trees is worth settling before you book anything.
2. Get the last cut and the leaf clearing done in the same visit if you can. Grass keeps growing later than the calendar suggests, and leaves left over a lawn through a wet autumn come off in spring as matted patches.
3. Shut off and drain the outside taps and disconnect the hoses. This is the cheapest task on the list and the most expensive one to skip.
4. Decide where the snow goes and who is moving it, before the first storm rather than during it. You already worked out the pile locations during the walk-around.
5. Write down what you saw green. Bed lines, bare lawn patches, the plants you could identify — by April you will not remember, and that note is the whole spring plan.

If any of that is going out to a contractor, ask for the date in the quote and not just the price — the two jobs on this list that are tied to the weather are seasonal cleanups and yard work and eavestrough clearing, and both get harder to schedule once the ground freezes.