Chris Goddard places a ball on his living room floor and watches as it rolls to the

south side of his Beaches home. This is no poltergeist at work but rather a structural problem that has left his home and a handful of others along the southeast side of Glen Manor Drive slightly tilted to one side. Hit was one of the features and characteristics that drew us to it • he said.

The crookedness also had little effect on his neighbors who were unable to resist the posh two-storey duplexes with a beach for a backyard. The tilting defect stems back to the late 1920s when developers began erecting homes in the area. Unfortunately, they did not put in proper foundations to counter the effects of a stream that ran below. The tilt on some homes is more obvious than that on others. For example, Derek Ferris's home and his neighbor's home lean toward each other, causing his eaves trough to fit snugly underneath his neighbor's and their chimneys to kiss. Because both homes are effectively trespassing on each other's property, owners have "encroachment agreements."

"Any settlement that will take place will occur in the first few years of life," said John Zimnoch, a sales associate with Re/Max. However, the tilting on what used to be an apartment complex at the end of the street was so bad (some said it tilted in three different directions) the city was forced to condemn the building and eventually have it tom down. Mr. Zimnoch said the crookedness does slightly affect the value of the homes and limits the number of prospective buyers. “A lot of buyers will come along and see the houses and think there is probably a structural problem,” he said. "It takes longer to sell because it has a reduced market.” However, some of the homes have sold for more than $400,000.

What would be the content of such an "encroachment agreement"? What if only Mr Ferris's home was leaning-would the agreement look different? Is the "reduced market" a result of more than structural worries?