Recent Articles:

A Staged house that sold in 3 hours

I wanted to share this recent story with you – a Staged house sells in 3 hours! Of course it’s exceptional but it does happen inspite of a slower real estate market.

I was recently asked to help a lady prepare her home for sale. The house is small (2 bedrooms only and a very small office), but very well located and well maintained. The paint was recent and the color neutral enough on the main floor but needed to be refreshed in a couple of rooms on the upper floor.

The problem? Old and outdated furniture, outdated and darkish curtains, some clutter and several personal items, such as the owner’s artwork displayed everywhere in the house (pretty but not to everyone’s taste).

We worked on a very limited budget (approximately $700). I made a list of accessories to purchase and we split the tasks – I went off to IKEA and the owner shopped in smaller local stores to locate items such as decorative pillows, a vase, branches, a mirror and some fabric. She repainted her old dining room table a dark brown (instead of a previous blue color) and recovered the chairs with dark brown microsuede fabric. She also repainted a small office and a bathroom over a weekend. The seller also worked very hard to declutter and put some of her furniture in storage.

Last, but not least, we rented two small white chairs and we reorganized her furniture to optimize the spaces, changed the curtains on the living room and set up the accessories.

As soon as the photographs appeared on the Internet, the phone started to ring. Three appointments were set up for the evening. The second visitors made and offer to purchase on the spot and it was accepted. The house sold the same day for %96 of the asking price. End of story!
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Comment savoir si un condominium a une bonne situation financière?

Le bien être financier d’un syndicat de condominium est très important. Acheter un condo dans un condominium, dont le syndicat de copropriété n’a pas les fonds nécéssaires pour fonctionner et payer les frais courants, est un risque majeur.

Des frais de condo peu élevés peuvent rendre un achat plus attractif, mais ils peuvent aussi être signe que le syndicat de copropriété n’est pas prêt pour des travaux urgents ou d’éventuels travaux de rénovation. Donc une fois installé vous vous exposez à des augmentations des charges au fur et à mesure du vieillissement du bâtiment.

Heureusement il y a moyen de connaître les états financiers du syndicat de copropriété. Les syndicats sont obligés de conserver les budgets annuels qui sont alloués à l’entretien de l’immeuble ainsi que les états financiers. Le plus important est de savoir quel est le montant de la réserve du fonds de prévoyance. Read more >>

Montreal MLS Barometer: Residential Market

The complete report on Montreal Market for the fist quarter 2009 is now available for download. This new report, now called the “Montreal Barometer”, has a detailed description of each section of Montreal, with 38 pages of up to date information on prices, sales, and average days on the market.

If you want to be informed on your neighbourhoods market analysis, this is a good document to have. Although a few areas don’t have exact informations, it will still give you an idea of how much activity your area has in terms of real estate.

Here is the link to the document online, it take a little while to view due to its size. Or you can download it here.

À la recherche de Condos? L’important: Le prix, la superficie et les dimensions.

Dernièrement j’ai reçu beaucoup d’appels d’acheteurs recherchant des condos au centre-ville en dessous de 150.000$.
Bien que nous les ayons dans notre système, nombreuses de ces propriétés sont à rénover , petites en superficie ou situées au sous-sol et/ou au niveau terrasse.

Rappelez-vous que le prix est fixé par rapport à certains facteurs: Situation par rapport au voisinage (Centre-Ville, Vieux-Port, Le Plateau, NDG, Rosemont, etc.), le niveau de l’étage (par exemple: un condo au dernier étage sera plus cher que celui situé au premier étage) et s’il inclut un garage ou un parking entre autres.

Si votre prix maximum ne correspond pas à vos critères, vous devriez peut-être chercher dans un autre quartier qui offre plus d’espace pour un prix inférieur. Ou accorder vos critères pour rester vivre dans le quartier que vous avez choisi.

Revoyez la dimension de la propriété , si votre budget est de 120000$ et vous cherchez un condo de 1200 pc.
au centre ville……. je crois que ce sera difficile. Il faut choisir: Rester au centre-ville dans un condo moins spacieux, ou (à nouveau) changer de quartier.

N’oubliez pas, un garage ajoute de la valeur à la propriété, le prix moyen pour un parking extérieur se situe entre 10,000$ et 15,000$. Un garage intérieur entre 20,000 et 35,000$ dépendant du quartier. Read more >>

Stuck between rain and construction.

Photo by Deya Bautista.

I don’ usually write posts about the traffic, but in this particular day (today) it seems that anywhere you go, there is always some kind of construction on the streets and sidewalk that makes traffic unbearable.

The city has countless of renovation sites, just a couple of blocks away from one another. Roads are being blocked, detours signs are everywhere. And with that: traffic, frustration and more delays. Green lights takes forever to appear, and by the time you get close to the intersection, it has already turned red. Again.

If your job takes you on the road often, like mine does, we must not forget to pack up a little extra patience before we get into our cars. And today, apart from patience, we need an umbrella and warm clothes. We’re getting close to the official Summer Day, yet it doesn’t feel like it.

Canadian Home Buyers Savvy and Optimistic

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) 2009 Mortgage Consumer Survey results were released last week, and indicate that nearly 90% of recent home purchasers across the country believe that home ownership is a good long-term investment and that almost 70% think that now is a good time to purchase a home in their community.

Buyers are knowledgeable about the mortgage process and their lender’s assessment of eligibility. For example, 86% are of the view that the level of total housing and other monthly payments should generally not exceed 40% of gross household income, which is in line with generally accepted mortgage lending practices.

Recent buyers are prudent mortgage managers.
According to the survey, 75% of purchasers have a goal to be mortgage free sooner than their original amortization. In fact, 20% of recent purchasers report having made a lump sum payment to their mortgage. Read more >>

Image of the day: Montreal from the edge of Griffintown

Photo by Michel Filion

While browsing through flickr, I came across this lovely picture taken by a talented young photographer.
This is the view of downtown taken from the outskirts of Griffintown. Lovely capture of the sky. Great lighting and composition!

The Montreal Real Estate Blog showcases outstanding images from talented local photographers. Images are licensed with Creative Commons 3.0 . If you’d like to submit your photography, please join our flickr pool.

CMHC: National rental vacancy rate slightly higher

According to this article, the CMCH found a slight increase on rental vacancy. It’s just 0.1% increase from last year, not a lot really. Montreal doesn’t appear in the list of cities with high vacancy rates. Also, the rental prices for 2 bedroom apartments have also increased accordingly. Here are the details:

The average rental apartment vacancy rate in Canada’s 35 major centres increased slightly to 2.7 per cent in April 2009, from 2.6 per cent in April 2008, according to the spring Rental Market Survey(2) released today by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

“Completions of condominiums, which continue to attract renter households looking to move into homeownership are decreasing demand for rental housing. Also, some of the completed condos compete with rental units if they were purchased by investors who then rent them out. These two factors have put upward pressure on the vacancy rate,” said Bob Dugan, Chief Economist at CMHC’s Market Analysis Centre. “However, this has been balanced by higher levels of demand for rental housing.”

Major centres with the lowest vacancy rates
Québec City 0.6 %, Regina 0.7 %, Winnipeg 0.9 %, Saguenay 1.1 %, Trois-Rivières 1.1 %.

Major centres with the highest vacancy rates
Windsor 15.5 %, St. Catharines-Niagara 5.3 %, and Abbotsford 4.8%.

Average Monthly Rentals
“The highest average monthly rents for two-bedroom apartments in new and existing structures were in Vancouver ($1,154), Calgary ($1,106), Toronto ($1,093), Edmonton ($1,059), and Victoria ($1,043). Of all the major centres, these five were the only ones with average rents at or above $1,000. The lowest average monthly rents for two-bedroom apartments in new and existing structures were in Saguenay ($494), and Trois-Rivières ($512).

Overall, the average rent for two-bedroom apartments in existing structures across Canada’s 35 major centres increased 2.9 per cent between April 2008 and April 2009.”

Source: CHMC via Newswire

Buying an Income Property to Live in

There is a fundamental difference between buying a property solely for investment purposes and buying it to live in it.
We all want to live rent-free. Having the revenues cover all of the expenses, including the unit we occupy. And while all of this is feasible, it is important to mention that certain factors affect this outcome: size of the building, revenues, etc. So let’s take a look at what we can expect when searching for a income property.

Buying a property as an investment alone

Your home is else where, but you want to buy as an investment. This is all a numbers game: a property that generates enough revenues to cover all the expenses and then some. The bigger the property (with larger units) the bigger the revenues, in this case you can expect to have expenses paid, plus a little extra at the end of the year. But this does not always occur with smaller properties such as duplexes or triplexes.

Buying an income property to live in it

You’re contemplating to buy, say, a triplex and you’re planing to live in it, your main concern does not go so much in:
After all expenses are paid; How much does this property gives at the end of the year? Chances are with smaller properties they would cover only the expenses.

If you’re living in it, and you only have one unit with tenants, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be making a surplus of money at the end of the year, much less going on vacation with property revenues.
Instead, ask yourself: How much does “your” portion of the mortgage represent?

For example: Read more >>

Fixed Rates Officially Going Up, Variable Rates going down.

Great deals only last for a limited time. We all knew it was coming, we just didn’t know how soon…
Canada’s biggest banks are increasing key mortgage rates. Royal Bank of Canada announced the change on five-year, fixed-rate mortgages to 5.45%, an increase of 0.2%.

Bank of Montreal, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce are following. The changes at RBC and BMO took effect on Tuesday this week, while new rates at TD, Scotiabank and CIBC were to be posted yesterday. ( I haven’t checked the news yet)

And those “special offers” from RBC, BMO and Scotiabank on five-year closed mortgages at 4.15% will also be subject to change without notice, reflecting a 0.2% increase.

On the other hand, variable rates are decreasing from Prime+0.80% to Prime+0.40%.
More info on variable rates on Canadian Mortgage Trends

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