Buying a Home

Buyer Tips For Negotiating Price
You want to make every dollar count in the purchase of your home. And one way to make it happen is to employ sound negotiating tactics that make a difference between small cents and dynamic dollars. read more…

If Another Mortgage is in Your Future, Be Prepared!
If it’s been years since you prepared for a mortgage loan interview, don’t assume that it’s the same world of lending. Mortgage practices have changed and streamlined and you need to be armed with facts, figures, and information when you first visit the lender. Jumping into the loan process unarmed can cost you time, headaches, even money in the form of higher interest.
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Multiple Offers: How Can You Compete?
In a hot market, there are more buyers than homes for sale. Prices may rise, and the days a home is on the market may shorten to a week or even less than a day. Some homes will sell before they are even registered in the local MLS. That means that sellers are often presented with multiple offers. How can you position your offer to be the one the seller accepts?
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Negotiating Tactics and Strategies Can Make or Break The Home Sale
In a perfect world, real estate closings would occur over night, sellers would keep every promise made, and both buyers and sellers would negotiate openly and fairly. Unfortunately, welcome to the real world where buyers whittle at the purchase price, closings are postponed, and both sets of players use negotiating gambits to win advantage.
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No News from the Seller? — Not Necessarily Good News
What’s the standard time frame for a seller to accept an offer? There’s no such thing as a standard time frame, it depends on how active the market is, how many other offers (if any) the seller is considering as well as the seller’s individual situation and availability (i.e. one of the spouses being out of town, etc.)
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Title Insurance – Is it for Everyone?
For most Canadians, a home is the largest single investment they will make. In today’s complex real estate environment, homebuyers can face a range of unforeseen problems that can affect their rights of ownership and the future marketability of their property. One of the ways some homebuyers choose to protect their financial investment is with title insurance.
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Considerations for those with children

Babyproofing Your Home
Proud new parents have an infinite number of pressing issues to consider before their bundle of joy arrives. From choosing a name to settling questions about religion to decorating the nursery — not to mention the emotional adjustments of becoming completely responsible for another human being — parents-to-be are wrapped up in the excitement leading up to the due date. Perhaps that’s why so many of them forget the most important step of the preparation process: babyproofing the home.
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Childproofing Your Home
Ignorance is bliss … and danger. Children often seem hardwired with an inherent curiosity for all that is hazardous. If you’ve lived in your current home for a length of time and are convinced you’ve covered all your bases when it comes to childproofing, here’s betting you haven’t. And if you’re preparing for a move, it’s easy to overlook hazards around your new home, given all of the excitement and hustle-bustle that you unpack with your belongings.
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Is Your Home Contributing to Your Child’s Asthma?
If you’re the parent of a child with asthma, you know how scary a sudden case of respiratory distress can be. And regardless of whether or not you’re directly affected by asthma, you’ve probably noticed that asthma is making the headlines more and more often these days. And that’s for a good reason: The number of people afflicted with this disease has sky rocketed. Although science hasn’t yet pinpointed exactly why this is the case, some environmental scientists strongly believe that poor air quality, which continues to get worse in metropolitan regions throughout Canada, is contributing to the problem.
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Preparing Your Child to Move
Children respond to the general atmosphere set in the home by the attitudes of their parents. If you look at moving as an exciting adventure full of new possibilities, then chances are very good that you will infect your children with enthusiasm and anticipation.
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The Silent Hazard in Your Home
You’ll hear from all of the child-safety experts that your home contains a literal minefield of dangers for your young child, particularly if he/she a curious toddler. By now, you’ve probably hired a babyproofer and have read the latest literature about keeping your home safe for your kids. Or, perhaps you’ve assumed the role of a babyproofer on your own, getting down on your hands and knees and crawling around the house in an attempt to get a toddler’s perspective on anything potentially dangerous within his reach.
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Moving Advice

Before You Move Checklist
It’s said that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Many strokes topple mighty oaks. You can eat an elephant a bite at time. If you are facing a move, old axioms like these can offer some encouragement, but how about some practical advice? What you really need are step-by-step tips that will help you chip away at the daunting task of packing, moving and settling in.
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Choosing a Mover
Relocation can be one of the most exciting endeavors you may experience in life. The challenge of pioneering your family to a new home, community, and job opportunity can be full of rewards if you take the time to make the moving process easier.
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Moving Day Etiquette
Moving day stinks. There’s no two ways about it. You’ve spent hours packing up and preparing for the arrival of your movers. Then you hold your breath as they begin the arduous process of transporting all of your worldly possessions from one place to another. You hope your furniture survives the journey and that your new home survives the move-in process unscathed. Few of us are able to claim that our homes or furniture didn’t suffer a single scratch, that a mirror didn’t break or that at least one item wasn’t mysteriously lost in transport.
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Moving Tips – Don’t Stress
Moving does not have to be stressful, just follow the tips and enjoy your new home.
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Moving Your Pet
Getting through the emotional stress of moving is difficult enough for adults and children. But what about pets, a species with whom we can’t even level? Pet owners are often baffled by their pets’ behavior during and after a move. Sometimes it’s a personality change, a regression in housebreaking habits or a sudden unexplained illness. Even if you don’t notice something that dramatic, there’s no question that your faithful companion is feeling stress. How do you move your pet and keep the strain to an absolute minimum — both to yourself and your beloved pet?
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Packing Tips
This move, I realized that the moving process needed to be organized like a scientific experiment. There are materials you need, there’s a procedure to follow. The result? You finish moving, and can settle comfortably and un-stressed into your new home.
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Selling Information

Sellers: If You Want It, Ask For It!
There’s nothing more frustrating to a ready, willing, and seemingly able buyer than to lose an offer to another buyer — especially since the seller was not specific (down to the letter) about what he expected to receive.
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The Value of Home Improvements
While home improvement projects add value to your home, if you undertake large renovations, it could be a challenge to recoup your costs when it’s time to sell. In December 2003, the National Center for Real Estate Research released a detailed analysis of property characteristics and selling prices. The report cautions that “homeowners must be keenly aware of the trade-offs when making remodelling decisions, especially if these renovations are done in anticipation of selling the home.”
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