I get a lot of press releases and most go into my ‘possible’ newsletter file. Every so often something interesting comes along and I want to know more about it and satisfy my curiosity. Ownright is one of them. The company says that it makes it easier to find and work with a lawyer during the homebuying process. 

The reason I wanted to know more is because when I was buying my place way too long ago, I didn’t have a real estate lawyer and had no idea where to find one apart from 1. Asking friends or 2. Going with the one my real estate agent, Bob, suggested. It worked out well but it was stressful and inconvenient. Could Ownright be easier for Canadians who want to buy a home (nearly 70 per cent want to)?

Now, this isn’t an endorsement nor am I being paid. I was nosy and wanted to know more, thought it was interesting and could make someone’s life easier. So I spoke with Joel Fox, co-founder and chief operating officer of Ownright. 

Renée:
What were the friction points with the property closing process that made you start Ownright?

Joel Fox:
It really came down to transparency and availability of information throughout the closing process. My co-founder was the one who came up with the idea. He had a horrible experience with the real estate lawyer portion of the closing, and felt there had to be a better way. Especially with FinTech competitors coming in to disrupt the banks, it felt like something similar should come into the legal industry. So he came up with the idea and shared it with me. I had gone through the closing process before and absolutely believed it was a pain point. Then, given some regulatory changes that happened as a result of COVID, it opened the door for us, as non-lawyers, to come in and create a solution that could be better than the status quo.

Renee:
So how do you keep that kind of impartiality if somebody's coming to you for legal help? General personal finance information suggests that the potential home owner get their own lawyer. So how do you manage that traditional advice with what you offer?

Joel:
So we are the lawyer. We represent both buyers and sellers, and it is absolutely required for any closing that happens in Ontario that both the buyer has a lawyer and the seller has a lawyer. So whichever side it is, it has happened in the past where we've actually had both sides end up reaching out to us and we have to decline one side. So there's always clear lines of representation on both sides. And one of the misconceptions about us is that we're just an AI tool and we don't have any real humans behind us, but we have lawyers and really great client support.

Renee:
I've spoken with lawyers, and as much as people in the tech industry say, "Oh, don't worry, lawyers are going to be eliminated," the lawyers I know look at the documentation produced by AI, and they're like, ‘this would actually not stand up in court.’

Joel:
Totally, totally. I should be very clear that I am not a lawyer, but the space of law that we operate in is very much transactional. So much of the service that we provide is support and guidance and answering questions and making people feel comfortable with the process. And AI, I mean, some people might disagree with me on this, but AI can't do that. If you're closing on one of the biggest purchases of your life, you want to be able to get a hold of a human being, and you want to feel that someone has something on the line to make sure that this transaction is going smoothly for you.

Renee:
What kind of specific pain points were there for forgetting a real estate lawyer? Was it just that people don't think about it until they're like, "We have a contract that we need to look at.”

Joel:
That's certainly one of them. Especially first-time home buyers, they go into the process of buying a home thinking, ‘I have to get a mortgage, I need to get a real estate agent to help me buy a home.’ I'd say the large majority of people don't really know that they need a real estate lawyer. And so they sign the dotted line on the purchase agreement, and then the real estate agent says, okay, great, now go get a real estate lawyer. So lots of people are caught off guard by that, and then they end up either just doing a quick Google search and choosing the first lawyer they see, or more often than not, they'll choose the real estate lawyer that the real estate agent recommends, which is a challenge because a lot of that is personal relationships. So if you're just choosing the first person that's recommended to you, you're not necessarily choosing the best person for you or the best service for you.

And there are a number of different ways that you can slice and dice the service, but even just looking at costs, some real estate lawyers charge $4,000 for a closing and we charge $1,000, so there's a wide discrepancy in terms of what people are charging. So I think that people really do need to do their research. Then I think a big pain point that we solve is just accessibility. So we provide a really great service for a good price. We're not the lowest price, but we provide a solid price and really great service. And in Toronto, there's certainly more real estate lawyer options available. They tend to be higher priced if you're getting higher quality folks, but in more rural regions, we become a great option because you just don't have as many people to choose from. And we're a digital solution and virtual, so we're able to service anyone across Ontario.

Renee:
Looking back at my experience when I bought, I did go with the lawyer my real estate agent recommended, but it worked out really well. In your case, when somebody connects to a lawyer through your platform, will that lawyer sit down with the client and go through all the pages of the document, what this means, what closing means, and all of those things?

Joel:
Yeah, and every lawyer should do that. So if anyone is going through a closing and they don't have that opportunity to sit down with their lawyer, that's actually not supposed to happen. So an absolute bare minimum requirement for us is that when all the documents are to be signed, our lawyer working with the particular client needs to be sitting. We do a video call like this, [editor’s note: we were speaking via video] and they sit on a video call, walk them through all the documents, and virtually witness them signing the documents.

But what we also do is, as soon as people onboard into our platform, after they've chosen to work with us, we give them the ability to book time with their lawyer just to ask any questions they have. So we try to make our lawyers and the broader team that supports our clients very accessible, because that's one of the most common pain points in the space. It just feels extremely transactional, and people don't necessarily feel supported outside of what you're describing, which is the signing meeting.

Renee:
I like how you can actually track the process because again, when I bought my place, there was no way to track. I would be wondering what's going on?

Joel:
Totally, it's a complete black box, right? That was our experience. My co-founder had a very bad experience with his lawyer. I had a fine experience, but I maybe I'm just a little bit more relaxed on it, where I'm like, I just trust that it's getting done. And, you know, if it wasn't, I'd be screwed because I wasn't asking questions. But what we're doing is just opening up our workflow to people. So if you were closing with us, you'd log into your dashboard and see the checklist of everything that's getting done. And people just want to know. Maybe they're not going to act on that information, but they like to be able to see what's happening. They're paying a lot of money for our service and the broader real estate transaction they're on. So they want to know that the work's being done, even if they're not calling us to follow up on it.

Renee:
People who are using Ownright can log on anytime, day or night, instead of keeping lawyer hours. Because I remember again, I had to take time off from work, go to my lawyer's office and sign everything, and then they handed over the keys. So I'm assuming that's also another pain point that's being addressed.

Joel:
Exactly. So thankfully, I had the same thing when we closed on our property. I literally had to take an afternoon off of work because I didn't even get to choose the time that I was in my signing meeting, and it was like 2 p.m. on a Tuesday in Midtown [Toronto]. I'm like, okay, I guess I just need to take the full afternoon off work to go sign documents. As a result of COVID, they adjusted the rules so that documents can be signed over DocuSign, and that persisted post COVID, thankfully. It's just a very logical route. But yeah, that is one of the more common issues. Ours is a common issue as well, where lawyer hours are maybe nine to five, probably a little bit shorter than that. So our hours are eight to six, just to give folks a little bit of time outside of the common work hours to be able to get a hold of us. And then, if you're looking for some details on your closing at midnight, you can log into your dashboard and get a pretty good idea of what's happening.

This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.

This week’s readings:

Taaaaax time! Is the CRA being unfair to single, childless Canadians? (The Globe and Mail)

A $40 weekly grocery bill in Canada? One woman says it’s possible (Daily Hive)

Except I can’t split my income. Consistently large refunds could be signal your tax strategy needs work: Christopher Liew (CP24)

Well, first, more debt. Two, risk of provincial and country brain drain, just to start. Why cutting student grats may have long-term financial implications for young graduates (The Globe and Mail)

Book promo continued. I appeared on CBC’s Just Asking with Saroja Coelho to chat about the singles tax. (CBC Radio)

Commented on this article: How to beat the singles tax and prioritize yourself as a solo earner (CBC)

I spoke with journalist Chanté Joseph about how to manage and plan your finances for her Glamour UK column. If the name sounds familiar, she wrote the viral article about whether having a boyfriend is embarassing now. Is the ‘single woman tax’ going to cost me my future? (Glamour UK)