Posts Tagged ‘Real Estate’

When the weather starts warming up in the spring my thoughts turn to spending more time outdoors. Those of you who own a house can increase your living space and activities with good landscaping. Our homes are probably the most important financial investments we’ll ever make. While we often spend time and money upgrading appliances,…

The real estate market in Canada has been the subject of much opinion and speculation over the last five years as prices continue to rise to new heights. Houses are over-priced, but by how much? Should prospective buyers wait for a crash before jumping into the market, or should they get in now before they’re…

For the past year we’ve been slowly finishing the basement in our now three-year-old home.  At first we decided to take the pay-as-you-go approach and so we hired a contractor to frame the basement last July. But six months later our project hadn’t progressed at all – it was difficult to line someone up to just do one stage at a…

The following article is a guest post by Sean Cooper who blogs about personal finance at Sean Cooper Writer. According to a poll by CIBC, the average homeowner won’t pay off their mortgage until right before retirement – age 58.  I plan to do it a lot sooner – by age 31.  I bought my…

Any real estate agent will tell you the service he or she provides is worth every penny.  But in a hot real estate market like Toronto, do you really need one? According to the latest figures from the Toronto Real Estate Board, the average home sells in just 20 days, so you can see why some home…

When I was nineteen, the brakes on my car seized, damaging the calipers and whatever was left on the rear pads.  I got a quote from a local mechanic chain with both “budget” and “brake” in their name, so I thought they must have the best price on brakes. At the time I knew nothing about…

Another disadvantage when considering downsizing your home is that even a smaller house will not cost that much less than the one I have now.

A recent TD Bank survey showed that while a quarter of first time home buyers did so on their own there is a growing trend of buying a house as a group.  In fact four out of 10 people surveyed think that buying property with friends or family members is a great way to get…

One of the regrets we had with our first home is that in the eight-and-a-half years we lived there we never got around to finishing the basement.  We vowed not to make the same mistake when we built our new home nearly three years ago.  So after we had the basement framed last summer we…