Real Estate

I’ve written before about quotes being twisted for various purposes and being misleading.  One witticism for real estate investing which means what it says is “Buy land!  They aren’t making any more of it”.  The wisdom that’s supposedly encapsulated in this saying is that there is a finite amount of space on planet Earth and [...]

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It seems that doom and gloom is everywhere in the economic and real estate world.  US banks are falling like flies, US real estate is dropping like a rock – the only thing that is going up is foreclosures!  I was recently talking to a friend who is trying to sell a house and he [...]

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My friend Christine has kindly agreed to write a series of posts on her experiences with buying a home for the first time which will be posted occasionally. See Part 10 – Home owner insurance.
 
Other bits and drabs

We were glad that as first-time homeowners, we did not have another property to sell before moving. [...]

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I alluded to this idea months back, but Telly didn’t like it, so I dropped it (whenever possible I like to do what Mike or Telly tell me). Recently its come up with a couple of friends, so I felt it was worth revisiting.
A friend is planning to move to another area, but she [...]

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My friend Christine has kindly agreed to write a series of posts on her experiences with buying a home for the first time which will be posted occasionally. See Part 9 – Closing costs.
 
Insurance of various kinds

In arranging insurance for our house, my husband and I were presented with other forms of insurance for [...]

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My friend Christine has kindly agreed to write a series of posts on her experiences with buying a home for the first time which will be posted occasionally. See Part 8 – Success!

In addition to the fees paid to a real estate lawyer for his/her professional services (approximately $1100 and up), you will also [...]

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My friend Christine has kindly agreed to write a series of posts on her experiences with buying a home for the first time which will be posted occasionally. See Part 7 – A close call.
Having inured ourselves to the speed-of-light pace of home buying in downtown Toronto, we had expected to be looking for a [...]

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Dave, who is in the process of buying a house asked the following question in the comments recently
I would appreciate some advice as far as asking price and renovations.
We are currently looking at purchasing an older home that will require 80K. The current owners did nothing (and I mean nothing) to the house and have [...]

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Apparently new home owners here in Canada haven’t learned much from their American counterparts because 40 year long term mortgages are getting more and more popular.
According to a TD bank representative about 60% of first-time home buyers are opting for a 40 year mortgage which indicates that they are having a hard time affording the [...]

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Now that we are in the sub-prime era, it has become very fashionable to declare that home owners that bought houses with little or no down payment are a big reason why foreclosures are at record levels. I have to respectfully disagree.
In my opinion, when buying a house, it doesn’t make a big difference [...]

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NOTE: All software linked to in this post is NON-AFFILIATE. We don’t make any money off of any of these, I’m just linking to them because I think they’re interesting. The Reflexive games allow one hour of free play before purchase.
A few months ago I posted some ideas for a real [...]

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My brother has to travel constantly for his job. While he was in North America, he and his girlfriend owned a Mazda3. As they were getting ready to leave North America they wanted to sell their car (instead of paying for it to sit in storage). A bunch of his co-workers were [...]

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Algonquin sky
I’ve been reading some “sky is falling” articles lately regarding underwater mortgages or upside down mortgages, where the amount owed by the house owner is greater than the value of the home.  These are often referenced in the same sentence as subprime mortgages.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t understand the big deal [...]

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Toronto Life had an excellent article some time back on mortgage slaves. The Canadian Capitalist has linked to this article before, and I think its an excellent question: is it worthwhile being house poor?
My ex-girlfriend and I discussed buying a place together a few times, and her feeling was always that to live [...]

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If you watch late-night infomercials, or attend the “free real estate investing” seminars, a popular element of the sales pitch is grinning people talking about buying property with “built-in equity”. They talk about getting a property, pulling $100K of equity out and going on a trip to Hawaii.
I’d like to get $100K and a [...]

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It always drives me nuts when people recommend a specific investment, give a bunch of reasons to buy it then finish with “of course, do your own due diligence before buying”. As I’ve written before, it always feels like such a cop-out. Often books which specifically claim to help you learn how to [...]

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