Understanding the Offer to Purchase Form is essential once your house hunting expedition is a success! You have found the perfect home, one that satisfies your needs, most of your wants- and best of all, fits your pocketbook. Now comes one of the most important phases of your home-buying experience: making an offer to purchase the home.
If you are buying a home, then, before you decide on whether this home is your dream home, the following checklist will help you look at prospective homes with a critical eye. We suggest printing this page and putting it on a clipboard. When you find a home that really interests you, mark the features you see and note their general condition on this list.
SELLING YOUR HOME ON YOUR OWN - OR USING A REAL ESTATE SALESPERSON
Home value sometimes referred to as "Value in Use", is best described as the probable price at which a home trades in a free, competitive, and open market and is synonymous with the market value.
The Income Tax Act does not specifically set out whether or not a gain or loss is capital in nature. The taxpayer is responsible for reporting the gain as income or capital gain. This report may then be challenged by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency with the onus of proof on the taxpayer.
If you have decided that now is the time to sell your home, you might be thinking: should I hire a Real Estate Sales Representative or do it alone. Have you ever considered repairing your own car? Anyone can buy the tools and parts. However, most of us just do not have the knowledge, training, experience or the expertise and commitment of time to do the job properly. Besides, there are plenty of experienced professionals to do the work for us.
HOW REAL ESTATE MARKET CONDITIONS AFFECT YOUR OFFER PRICE
STAGING… FOR A FASTER SALE AND HIGHER PRICE
When should I sell my home? Your answer to this question might be right now! If you have taken a job in another city or made an offer on a new home, or had an addition to your family, selling your home fast might be the most important goal you have. Most people, however, have some flexibility when they sell their home. Let us take a closer look at the most important factors that can go into this decision.
A hot market is a "seller’s market". During a seller’s market, properties can sell within a few days of being listed and there are often multiple offers. Sometimes homes even sell above the asking price. Though most buyers want to get a "deal" on a home, reducing your offer by even a few thousand dollars could mean that someone else will get the home you desire.
There are many television shows today that focus on home staging. If you have not watched any, do yourself a favor and tune in. They all say the same thing: do not even consider putting your house on the market until you have taken a close look at its condition. Experienced sales people know that you only have one shot at impressing potential buyers, so take some time to prepare your home for showings. You will be rewarded with a faster sale and a higher offer.
A very accurate saying is that "Any home will sell once you get the price right." Of course, this is usually said from the perspective of dropping a price until it's too attractive to pass up. Actually, the accurate pricing of your home prior to listing is as much an art as it is a science.
A great many moves in our lives are to larger residences to accommodate growing families. Or, perhaps our financial development allows us to move up to a larger home with more features and amenities. There is no stress involved in trying to reduce our life’s stuff to fit into a smaller place. If anything, we just need to shop for some more furniture for the new larger place.
You may have lived in your home for many years. The location factors that you considered when making your purchase decision may not apply to today’s buyers. The task is to identify the current positive aspects of your home’s location and market them aggressively. When it comes to positive locations, people’s different attitudes and preferences will determine if a location is a “good” one.
Marketing a home for sale is quite different from most other types of marketing and advertising. Unlike marketing many products, homes are each unique. Marketing decisions will be based on thorough examination of the home’s features and comparison to the competition in the marketplace. Decisions must also be made concerning improvements that might enhance the home and sell it faster and for a higher price.
Whether buying or selling a home, one activity will be part of the process in all cases and for all involved. Let’s look at the offer to purchase contract and negotiation process from both sides
Rental suite can help you pay off that mortgage but 'it could be a nightmare'
Malcolm Morrison, The Canadian Press TORONTO - Buying a house with a rental suite can be just the ticket to help you pay off your mortgage years earlier than it might have otherwise been possible.
But landlord beware: there are potential problems connected with getting financing, getting rid of tenants you really shouldn't have let in in the first place and zoning issues.
The idea of having someone pay several hundreds dollars a month towards your mortgage might also entice you into buying a house you really can't afford, and you could find yourself dangerously dependent on that rent money - experts will tell you this is a bad idea.
"I think leveraging yourself to a point where you are totally dependent on a tenancy and if you lose it, it could be extremely harsh on you," said David Scarr of Royal LePage Westside in Vancouver.
Scarr said he is seeing the rental suite option become more popular, as house prices have surged in the last couple of years while mortgage rates resided at historic lows. At the same time, there has been a ready supply of tenants looking to find something decent below $1,000 a month.
"There's always been an extreme shortage of good available (rental) stock, especially when you get students going to university, want to be close to a bus line or young people starting out in the workforce," he said.
"They can't pay the standard - right now in downtown you're looking at a one-bedroom apartment probably for $1,400 a month for about 550 square feet."
When you start number crunching to see if this makes financial sense, be aware that Canadian banks have toughened their standards for financing houses with a rental suite.
"Banks used to do a rent reduction, so that if you qualified to carry $1800 a month, and the tenant was carrying $500 and it was a legal unit, then they would take that amount off that you had qualified," explained Diane Speer, of ReMax in Toronto.
"Or they would take some of the income and then discount, like if you're getting $13,000 a year from a unit, they might add that into your income or take a percentage thereof. That's constantly changing, too, the way they're looking at it."
"If it's an illegal suite, you won't get any break from the bank."
And that brings up the issue of zoning: many rental suits in homes can be illegal, meaning the municipality hasn't zoned a particular area for rental housing.
"There's always the issue of whether it's legal or not legal. Most of them are not legal,” said Speer,
"But most neighbours will turn a blind eye because it's been a way of living for so long a while and affordable housing is available in the neighbourhood. The only time I've really seen issues with them is somebody moved in who has three cars or somebody moved in who is an issue."
Scarr agreed, adding that in Vancouver the blind eye is also turned very often since "the city is aware that they do not provide affordable housing stock so it's something that the city does not act upon unless the space is horrible."
"Generally speaking, we've turned a blind eye to unauthorized suites now for the last 15, 20 years," he said.
Having decided that you really don't mind sharing your house with a complete stranger, you will want to take extra care when holding auditions for your apartment and adopt more than a passing familiarity with provincial landlord-tenant legislation.
"A lot of people are so excited to get a tenant and get someone to pay that they're not doing a credit check or not making sure on the application that the apartment is being rented to one person and not a family of six," said Speer.
Speer observed that some of her clients will get in touch with the student housing office at local community colleges.
She has also done the landlord routine and said you just have to be smart about it.
"We were just always really cognizant of keeping the rent at an amount where we would get lots of applicants so that we could choose someone who we thought would be good, one person, a professional maybe who travelled, who wasn't around," said Speer,
"I think that if you don't have standards there or do any kind of qualification or screening, it could be a nightmare and I've seen a lot of people go through it."
