Real Estate Editorial

With the ever increasing value of the Loonie, and an economy that doesn’t seem to slow down, why not consider buying in the USA. If you have ever thought of buying property down south this is the time to do it.

Here is Why?

1) As stated in the intro, the Canadian dollar is at or near par with the American dollar, The higher the dollar rises the more attractive property becomes south of the 49th.

2) House Prices in Canada continue to rise, the attractiveness of buying a property in the USA when the real estate market there is in a buyers market allows for great deals.

3) Canadian Vacation property is at a premium. I know I know we are known as a cold country and although it is not 12 months of continuous winter we do have some cold months. If you can find a desirable spot in Canada for a vacation property your going to pay through the nose for it. In America there are a lot of warm states so vacation property is more readily available.

4) Americans are more willing to take offers from Canadians because we have cash. Putting a downpayment of 10-20% is nothing new for Canadians, with the ability to add some equity and not finance the entire property gives both mortgage companies and sellers more confidence in the Canadian buyer.

If you are planning on investing in some property don’t limit your search to Canadian properties, you might be missing out on some deals south of the border.

Real Estate, real-estate, Canada Real Estate, Canadian Real Estate, Home Buying, House Buying, Real Estate Blog, Real Estate Blogging

I’ve recently been looking into helping change the title on my father’s house from Joint Tenancy to Tenancy in Common, so what does this mean exactly.

For a quick look at the definition of both these terms, I’ve defined them in an earlier post called The Definitions of Real Estate - Part 1.

Well it means exactly, that when the title of your house is listed as Joint Tenancy each owner has an equal undivided share of the property. So when one of the owners of the property should pass away the entire ownership of the property is transfered to the surviving owners.

If your title is listed as Tenancy in Common, each owner owns a percentage of the property (This doesn’t have to be an equal share). So when one of the owners of the property should pass away their portion of the property can be transfered according to the wishes of their will.

So generally when should you use Tenancy in Common or Joint Tenancy?

Join Tenancy: Used commonly when people are married, or in a long term common law relationship. Property that is purchased where 1 owner is willing to give their share to the other owner upon their passing.

Tenancy in Common: Used commonly between business partners, property bought between siblings, property bought between parents and children.

Real Estate, real-estate, Canada Real Estate, Canadian Real Estate, Home Buying, House Buying, Real Estate Blog, Real Estate Blogging

I didn’t realize Google was doing this until i read a post at MyTechOpinion.com called Google’s New Presentation Technology for Real Estate by NikNik (She has a cool First Name Last Name combo, If she ends up reading this, she’ll know what I’m talking about) which has Google developing a new presentation type software for FREE at google docs & Spreadsheets.

So I thought i would take a chance and give this a try. I used the spreadsheet application that is offered by Google to put together some pretty data intensive spreadsheets, having thousands and thousands of rows. The Google spreadsheet app handled this with no trouble at all, quite impressive I thought considering this in an online application. If you are a Microsoft Excel user then using this software will be an easy transition, basically if you put both of these applications beside each other, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell them apart (hmmmm). The Google app brings a lot of functions and options to make this application a fully functional spreadsheet. The only thing I didn’t like was when I had created multiple sheets in my workbook, I wasn’t easily able to scroll from sheet 1 to sheet 20. This scrolling feature by Google was way way too slow.

In all honesty this is a great tool for anyone who needs to provide presentations or have access to their work online. For Real Estate agents it’s a great tool because, you can write up your documents, number crunch with a spreadsheet and create a presentation all in one spot. The cool thing is once your done, and you wish to show it to your clients, you can bring it all up in one spot from any computer on the Internet and present it.

This will also save time and money meaning, no more expensive printing costs and stationary costs. Why not create the presentation online post it to your website, give your client a user name and password and allow them to access it anytime they want. They then can decide if they want to print it, look at it, or save it on their computer.

Google once again provides a great free tool, that can be used free by anyone who has a Google account.

Spreadsheet, Google, Excel, Software

We should all try to do our part and live our lives to help save our planet. Here are a few simple tips that might get us all started on the right path. I’m not trying to change the world but as everyone knows if we all do our part we might be able to make a difference for our children and grandchildren.

1) Recycle: This is pretty self explanatory and everyone knows what recycling is but not everyone does it. This actually is not that difficult to accomplish if you have a plan in place. Setup a system in your kitchen or where you dispose your garbage, get some garbage cans or bags and label them one for cans, bottles, and paper. Set them in a visible convenient spot and start using your system consistently. Just like anything else after getting used to recycling it will become habit.

2) Fluorescent Bulbs: The preconceived notion about fluorescent bulbs for the home is they are expensive, well they really aren’t that expensive anymore. By using a fluorescent bulb you will save energy, you probably won’t ever have to change them, and you will see some savings on that electric bill. Conventional bulbs are so inefficient, produce enormous amounts of heat and give off larger amounts of green house gas emissions which we all know harm the environment.

3) Programmable Thermostat: A programmable thermostats greatest advantage is its ability to control the temperate of your home at set times during the day. You can set the temperature accordingly depending on your lifestyle and schedule. There is no sense keeping your heat on all day when you are at work or out for the day. Imagine the savings on your next bill and the energy you save when your not using that extra heat or air conditioning.

4) Low Flow Toilets Sort of: Not all of us can afford to just go and change all the toilets in our house, so why not build our own low flow toilets. Fill some water bottles or water jugs and place them in the Tank (Make sure the Tank is empty), each time you flush and the tank re-fills it won’t fill up with as much water simple as that. We all use too much water this is just an easy simple way to conserve.

See they were simple, all of these tips can be accomplished by all of us. Why not take a weekend or less probably and do your part, I know I will.

Environment, Energy, Global Warming, Climate Change, Recycling, Green

I wanted to dig a little deeper into some Market trends after i recently posted Real Estate Market Still Booming and see what the latest average prices were on homes across the country. Here are the latest average prices according to The Canadian Real Estate Association for the month of July and August. There are sure a lot of provinces and cities that have experience some great gains in the past year. What I find most shocking, of all the gains across the country there are some major increases in the Territories.

Note: The city stats for Fredericton and Yellowknife are for July not August.

Real Estate, real-estate, Canada Real Estate, Canadian Real Estate, Market Trends, Market, Economics, Investment