Improved Financial Assistance Plan to Encourage Home Ownership

The Ville de Montréal improved its Home Ownership Program, which aims to help tenants purchase affordable housing in Montréal.

Since last year, the QFREB has been working with the Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal to make the Ville de Montréal revise this program. The QFREB considered that the program’s guidelines were no longer realistic, considering the increase of property prices over the last few years.

The announced improvements include, among others, larger subsidies for those who wish to purchase property in Montréal. For example, households with at least one child are now eligible for $10,000 in financial assistance compared to the previous amount of $7,500. Including taxes, the maximum purchase price has also been increased from $200,000 to $235,000. Subsidies for singles and couples without children have also been improved, as well as the subsidies offered to tenants who wish to purchase the rental property they live in (plexes with 2 to 5 dwellings). The QFREB will continue to call for other measures from the Ville de Montréal, which will become part of a strategy to attract families to Montréal.

Good news, don’t you think? Tenants and first time buyers get moving, before their generosity runs out.

For more information, visit la Ville de Montreal Site, or if you need a step by step process and help with the purchase process contact Sheila.

Mi casa es Zoocasa?

Well, not exactly.

I got juicy little piece of information from Move Smartly:

There’s a new way to search for houses online in Canada, and it’s not Realtor.ca.

Zoocasa, a Canadian real estate search site backed by Rogers Communications Inc, is now online. The site is currently in Beta which is tech talk for “they’re not quite done yet”.
Zoocasa allows users to search for homes by neighbourhood and offers a very slick and intuitive user interface. Unfortunately the site appears to have just a fraction of the available listings in Canada. A quick search for Toronto reveals that they have roughly a third of all listings. Hopefully more brokerages will start feeding their listings to Zoocasa in the near future.

It seems that micasa and realtor.ca has a little friend coming to play in the park with them.
Online browsing getting more interesting.

Let’s just hope they maintain good behaviour and compliant to the Canadian Real Estate Association’s policy to stay in the game, like micasa has. And not run into the same problems as previous players.

After all, MLS has crushed upstarts before. Two Toronto-based sites, Realtysellers Ltd. and Realestateplus.ca, shut down in the past two years after run-ins with the Canadian Real Estate Association, which owns the MLS trademark. Housing123.com is accused of using its information without permission. ( The Globe and Mail )

After doing a search for Montreal properties, I was ecstatic to see that they actually have listings appearing in the results. So Montreal is game too.

We’ll be keeping an eye in the development of this site, and see it grow from there.

Best of luck Zoocasa team.

Eight things you didn’t ask for - ( I’ve been memed!)

I have been meme (a while ago) by Marg over at Collingwood-Bluemountain Blog.
Although at first I was a bit shy to talk about my personal preferences (after all this blog is about Real Estate, no?), I am now more at ease to finish up the questionnare. Eight things about me. Here we go:

1. Who Is Your Favourite Musical Artist?
I actually have a couple: I love Jamiroquai for his funky acid jazz style music and for being the best one man performance I’ve ever seen live. Also an Argentinian band called Soda Stereo, these guys started out in the 80’s and evolved with time, reinventing themselves until they separated in late 1997.

2. Who Is Your Favourite Artist?
For painters I’d have to say Salvador Dali, he had this really interesting/scary way of looking at the world.
Not so crazy about his early work, but the later surrealist paintings were fantastic.

3. Who Is Your Favourite Blogger?
Wow, this is a tough one! Gain, there are 2 I can think of:
Canadian blogger Christopher DeWolf from SpacingMontreal - for being on the ball, always updated with local events and news.

Joey Arak (senior editor of Curbed) because of his writing style. His post are short, to the point but always filled with witty remarks. I often have a giggle reading his entries.

4. If you could meet anyone (alive or dead), who would it be and what is the most interesting thing about them?
Oscar Wilde. What’s interesting about him? He was just brilliant. An underated literary genius, and has the best quotes ever.

5. What Did You Want To Be When You Grew Up?
A teacher, an astronaut, an artist, an sculptor, a psychologist, or anything that would caught my interest for a while :)
Having a fine arts background, I became interested in digital media. But that was much later (mid 90’s). For many years I was involved with multimedia, then e-commerce and programming. ( I’m such a geek!)

6. What Is The Most Interesting Piece of Trivia You Know?
El Salto Angel (angel’s fall) is the tallest water fall in the world, 3212 feet high - located in Venezuela. It beats the Tulega falls (South Africa) by 102 feet.

7. If you could live in any point in history what would it be and why?
The pharaonic era of ancient Egypt. Because of their costumes, traditions and architectural scenery, not to mention their achievements in arts, mathematics and construction techniques

8. What Is The Most Interesting Job You Have Ever Held?
Being part of a group of developers that created interactive web-based educational games for primary and secondary schools.
The games were programmed in Flash 4 (a long time ago), and cover subjects of mathematics, biology and physics. We had to created the design and interactive aspects of each test. The final product was then translated into Arabic and sent to the clients for final approval. That was something! I learned a lot about each subject while we worked on the programming of each project.

——————————

Mission accomplished.
I’m now supposed to pass it on to 8 more bloggers, but it seems that since I am two months late to respond (such a procrastinator), most of the bloggers I thought of passing it to, have already done it. So, let’s do this instead: if you’d like to do the questionnare on you blog, write me the link to it on the comments box, I will make sure to pass by and check it out!

Thank you. No more questions, your Honor.

The MLS upgrades to Realtors.ca: website review

Much has been said about the upgrade of MLS.ca to Realtor.ca: Image mapping, user-friendly layout and over all, a better use of technology.

As Toronto Real Estate West describes:

On May 28th, 2008, MLS.ca will be introducing some new features to the web site on behalf of REALTORS® across Canada. The result will be an even better real estate resource, with more information about the properties displayed on the site.The first change will be the introduction of interactive mapping. You’ll be able to use Microsoft Virtual Earth software on the site to determine your search area, and to determine where a property is located. Interactive mapping will make it much more convenient to search traditional neighbourhoods or a specific region.The web site will also have a new streamlined text search. You’ll be able to input your initial search criteria without all of the details of an Advance Search. The site will still offer the detailed or Advance Search option, but also has a streamlined text version to make looking for properties even more convenient.There will be a new look, or design.

After reading all the hype about the new and improved website, one can only think that it would be a change for the better and that finally the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) had a good thing going for the home buyers and owners who browse the site. But it was only after a visit - and testing the new features - that you realize: apart from the interactive mapping, not much has changed.

Really.

Yes, the design is much better. But then again, we’re not there to see the pretty graphics. Are we?

The search function with interactive mapping, great addition. But stick to the location box on the top right hand side to find your area of interest, otherwise you’ll be clicking on that map for ever, until it gives you the right sector.

Now on to the Advanced Search:

Uh, not so advanced. Rather disappointingly simple.

First off, the form doesn’t give you a multiple choice box for the neighbourhoods. Instead, after choosing the province, you have to input the street and postal code. Which is fine, if you know exactly the street AND postal code of the area you are searching. But really, how many people you think can memorize these things? Honestly.

User friendly Advanced Search means you give as many options as possible so the user doesn’t get frustrated with the lack of them. Don’t have an exact street in mind? No problem, you can search by sectors.
In this particular case, I was looking into Old Montreal condos, but ended up with a list of properties from all over the island. Advanced? Not really.

Well, the new mapping function is definitely a plus. But there are still some of us out there that likes the old fashion: “input-as-much-detailed- information-as-possible” and get the results we want with one click of the “Search” button. Unfortunately, we are not there yet.

Hoping (fingers crossed) that they will soon announce a much-needed upgrade to the site, once again. It was a good start, but there is still much more room for improvement.

Canadian Real Estate Blogosphere gets media attention

Real Estate and Mortgage bloggers are finally getting noticed in the main stream media.

Just today, Rob Carrick from Globe and Mail’s Report on Business, wrote a comprehensive article on the Canadian Real Estate Blogosphere, as well as the Financial Blogs.

Well, it’s about time someone notices the bloggers :)

In his column, he mentions:

Blogs, on the off chance you haven’t heard, are an online platform where people with an interest in a topic post their musings on a regular basis. Financial topics are big in the blogosphere and, as money matters go, there’s nothing bigger for most people than buying and selling a home.

Most housing blogs are written by people in the industry, such as agents or mortgage brokers, which makes sense because real estate matters are not a day-to-day concern for most individuals. One issue that does come up repeatedly is mortgages, which happens to be the subject of one of the most essential blogs in the real estate area.

Good Mortgage blogs in Canada are hard to find. The already mentioned Canadian Mortgage Trends has to be one of the best mortgage blogs I have read so far. Updated daily and always with fresh information.

There were several other blogs included on Mr Carrick’s article, which we already have them listed on our links page. As for the ones he forgot to mention: Move Smartly - (another favorite) and last but not least, Montreal Real Estate Blog.

It’s OK. We won’t take it personal :)

Read Rob Carrick’s article: Looking to buy? Sell? Blogs can help

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Improving Your Home’s Air Quality

Is the air in your home making you sick?

It can be as innocuous as a persistent cough, rash or headache. But, for the very young, the elderly and those with respiratory disease, the effects of indoor air contamination can be far more serious. The very air you breathe could be affecting the comfort and health of your family. Recognizing the symptoms of poor air quality is the first step toward fixing the problem. Bad air can be the cause any of the following symptoms:

• fatigue
• headaches
• cold or flu symptoms such as coughing, congestion and sneezing
• redness or irritation of the eyes
• irritation of the nose or throat
• dry, chapped or irritated skin
• allergies
• asthma attacks

Your home may have bad air if you or your family continuously experience any of these indicators, primarily when spending time at home. [Read more]

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