Land titles offices in Calgary and Edmonton have reopened after being shut down on Tuesday due to a technical issue that resulted in a system outage. The system was back up and running as of 5 p.m. on Wednesday, but was offline again for a short time on Thursday morning.
As of 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, Service Alberta said Spin2 was back online.
Service Alberta said offices were open Thursday morning in Calgary and Edmonton and requests were being processed.
Service Alberta said customers should contact Land Titles at (780) 427-2742 or (403) 297-6511 or lto@gov.ab.ca with any questions.
For Spin2 contact (780) 422-7874 or the Spin2 website at www.spin.gov.ab.ca
A Service Alberta spokesperson said no personal information was affected as a result of the outage and that all payments and documents are “safe, secure and ready for processing.”
Neil Levine said the outage occurred during regular application processing and that offices in Calgary and Edmonton were shuttered Tuesday as a result.
“Staff worked overtime and will continue to do so to focus on processing registration requests through next week,” Levine said.
A barrister and solicitor with StoneTree Law said Wednesday afternoon that the system outage created immediate problems for lawyers trying to access initial title searches and confirm basic transactions.
Natalie Reeder said homebuyers and lenders can circumvent the system in the case of outages, but that could add “hundreds of dollars to their closing costs.”
She said that’s not the only problem a system outage could cause for potential homebuyers and sellers.
It could delay homebuyers from taking possession of their new home, or sellers from accessing funds to buy their next home. Reeder said buyers may also have to deal with mortgage rates expiring, which “could cost thousands over the term of their mortgage.”
Levine said work to repair their application system is underway.
“Our application systems are being fully restored as a result of work which occurred throughout the night and significant progress has been made,” he said.
Levine said the office opened at 11 a.m. on Wednesday along with basic counter service phones, with a focus on “restoration of service, personal privacy and data integrity.”
Levine said they’ve been able to reduce the backlog of requests by about 30 per cent despite the recent technical issues and that processing times are now down to about seven days.
–With a file from Global’s Erika Tucker
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