Are you considering a move to or within Ottawa? Is an Ottawa Urban Neighbourhood being considered? Want to walk to work or school? Ottawa used to be a small city with a well defined core of urban neighbourhoods. Certainly Centretown, the Golden Triangle, the Glebe, Lowertown and Sandy Hill would have been considered “urban” for the last 60 to 100 plus years.
Ok, so you’re just about to close on your home purchase or sale, what do you do for the utilities? Does it just magically get setup for you? Maybe, or maybe not ;^)
Property tax bills should be moved to the new owner, generally done by the city or your lawyer on closing.
Here’s additional information:
The presentation and photographs are what bring in potential buyers of your home. Professional staging and photography could make such a huge difference in the
According to CMHC-SCHL the Government of Canada just released several tools and resources to help with the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive program.
These include:
1/ the product highlight sheet (PDF)
2/ the online calculator on the government website
3/ all about the program on the government website
4/ all about the process on an awkward government website, that may or may not work for you
Possibly, the most important question is how the “loan” is paid back. According to a quick review of provided info, you can pay back the full loan if you want at any time. If you sell the home you need to pay back as a percentage of the sale price.
For example, you “borrowed” 10% of value of a new home. When you sell you must pay the government of Canada 10% of the sale price, whether value went up or down.
For resale (not new) homes the max is 5% of value.
Why not borrow the full amount you can, and then if value goes up a lot, pay off the full loan just prior to selling? Not yet clear how this would be handled.
I expect there will be MANY more questions about the process and requirements. It really doesn’t seem like the government thought this program through…but it does line up nicely for a fall election.
There is no doubt that first time buyers are finding it MUCH harder to buy a home in the Ottawa market. Hopefully this program will help in a meaningful way.
The 2 most accurate ways to get information about a real estate listing are to:
1) Look it up on Realtor.ca (also known as MLS.ca)
2) Go directly to the listing agent/brokerage’s website, if you know it.
Google’s search algorithms are always changing and you never know what you will see when you search in Google. It’s confusing.
Stay tuned for my upcoming email explaining how real estate listings are distributed on the internet.
Buying a home may initially seem daunting but following these steps can help to simplify the process. I see many first time buyers unsure of how to begin searching for a home and these are the tips I give them.
As most people know, FIRST Time home buyers, as well as a few others, are able to lend themselves up to $25,000 from their RSP’s to help with the downpayment on a home. Recently there was a helpful online article introducing
The quick answer is “Yes, please do”. Here are the biggest reasons why: