Lawyer Profile
Edward L. Wilson
Vancouver, British Columbia
Overview
Ed practices in the areas of real estate and municipal law, with a focus on real estate development. He advises clients on a wide range of projects, including industrial site development, heritage designation and density bonusing arrangements, shopping centre rezonings and redevelopments, office and industrial parks, condominium projects, strata title hotels, and mine site development. His experience also includes the subdivision and sale of pulp and saw mills, municipal downtown redevelopment, and commercial lease negotiations for both landlords and tenants.
He has been involved in large land assemblies, subdivisions, bare land strata plans, air space parcels, real estate acquisitions, financings, sales, and the structuring of ownership and transaction models. Ed works closely with sellers, buyers, and developers on commercial, residential, industrial, resort, and financing matters, and also advises on environmental issues related to real property.
Ed is recognized as a leading authority in British Columbia on strata corporation windups, having completed dozens of windups including the province’s first court-approved windup. He has served on multiple committees proposing changes to strata property law, including the BC Law Institute’s committee that recommended changes to the Strata Property Act that allowed for more the flexible rules facilitating windups.
His experience also includes advising on energy-related projects such as cogeneration plants, run-of-river generation facilities, electrical transmission lines, natural gas pipelines, and LNG plants. Ed has further advised on the development of standard form documents in the real estate, strata management, and mortgage broker sectors, and supports professionals in those industries on regulatory matters.
Ed has particular expertise with respect to the unique land issues which arise in relation to the acquisition of and on-going access to linear projects. Ed’s recent representative experience includes:
He is one of the leading experts on strata corporation windups having completed a number of strata corporation windups as well as the first court approved windup in BC. Ed has been an active member of a number of committees over the years proposing changes to strata property law, including the BC Law Institute’s Committee that recommended changes to the Strata Property Act that allowed for more the flexible rules facilitating windups. Since then, Ed has been working in conjunction with various other lawyers at Lawson Lundell and has closed on more than 25 strata windups involving approximately 1100 strata lots with a total sale price exceeding $798,000,000. Ed is currently working on a number of additional strata windups at various stages involving over 1000 strata lots. The Strata Wind Up Group is the leading strata windup group in BC, having advised strata corporations, liquidators, purchasers, owner’s groups, and real estate brokers on over 55 strata windups.
Ed is CLEBC’s leading volunteer having chaired more than 12 courses and written over 30 papers on such topics as: Strata Property Act, Real Estate Development, Commercial Condominium By-laws, Property Transfer Tax, Financing Urban Growth, Easements, Resort Developments and Hotel Properties, Electronic Filing, Liability Issues for Strata Agents and more. Ed has been the co-editor of CLEBC's Real Estate Development Practice Manual since 1994.
Ed received the Georges A. Goyer, QC Memorial Award for Distinguished Service to the legal profession in 2023 which recognized Ed's exceptional contributions to the legal profession and the development, the law in British Columbia. The award is the Highest Honour bestowed by the CBABC and Ed was the first, and to date, the only solicitor to be honoured with this award.
Practice Areas
Bar Information
Called to the bar: 1983 (BC)