Many say property is the best investment you can make. Bursting housing bubbles and mortgage scandals aside, they’re usually right.

The price of making that investment varies widely in Canada, depending on where you live. We looked at how much you need to earn to buy a house in every major Canadian city.

To get these numbers, we consulted Adrian Williams, a Toronto mortgage broker. He explained that to calculate the income required you need to know the purchase price, down payment, rate, utilities – mortgage qualifying must include a minimum of $100 a month for heating costs – and taxes.

We got the average purchase price per city from the Canadian Real Estate Association, and Williams provided the property tax rates. At his suggestion we used a 2.99% interest rate, which is the average qualifying rate for a 5-year fixed term. We used a down payment of 10% of the purchase price and calculated $100 a month for utilities.

According to Williams, “Other factors that will be included with mortgage qualification are the total monthly payment obligations from credit card, LOC’s, personal & car loans, car lease and other types of credit that require a monthly payment.”

Here is what you need to earn to buy a house in every major Canadian market. (Numbers are rounded to the nearest dollar.)

Vancouver

Average price: $819,336

Monthly mortgage payment: $3,570

Property tax: $251

Income required: $147,023

Calgary

Average price: $465,047

Mortgage mortgage payment: $2,026

Property taxes: $236

Income required: $88,578

Edmonton

Average price: $365,520

Mortgage payment: $1,592

Property tax: $244

Salary required: $72,617

Regina

Average price: $331,161

Monthly mortgage payment: $1,443

Property tax: $378

Income required: $72,028

Saskatoon

Average price: $349,322

Monthly mortgage payment: $1,522

Property tax: $366

Income required: $74,546

Winnipeg

Average price: $270,605

Monthly mortgage payment: $1,179

Property tax: $274

Income required: $58,235

Ottawa

Average price: $357,887

Monthly mortgage payment: $1,559

Property tax: $336

Income required: $74,820.28

Toronto

Average price: $587,505

Monthly mortgage payment: $2,560

Property tax: $354

Income required: $113,009

Montreal

Average price: $344,273

Monthly mortgage payment: $1,500

Property tax: $237

Income required: $68,884

Halifax

Average price: $264,447

Monthly mortgage payment: $1,152

Property tax: $266

Income required: $56,929

Source: workopolis.com

We all know that traditionally, spring is the hottest season for real estate. Sales peak in the April to June period, soften into the summer, resurrect for September and October and then fall into the winter. Even this November of 2014, while sales are up over last November, they are down 18 per cent over October 2014. So does this mean that you shouldn’t try to sell your property in December? The short answer is no.

If you have to sell, take a hard look at selling when there is less competition – as in, now! Properties do sell in December. Some Realtors had their best month of sales in December.

That’s why you shouldn’t buy the standard myths:

- December is a bad month to sell and, what with the holidays, no one comes out looking;

- The average realtor has gone skiing (well, maybe); and

- Nobody buys over the season anyhow.

If you want to sell, think again. Realtors know (or ought to know) that, while you do not want to have anyone tromping through your home on Christmas Day, those that are out looking in December are serious buyer types. They are definitely into moving, and soon.

Since most sellers believe no one is looking, fewer homes are being put up for sale – ergo less competition. Competition to buy is less, buyers are more serious, and sellers know that an offer in December may not come around again until March. So, if you need to sell --- go against the trend and consider December.

Here are a few tips to help your property sell.

- List your property with a Realtor who is around over the holidays.

Tell them not to book appointments on the days when you want peace, such as Christmas/Boxing Day, etc., but you want Realtors to know that your home is for sale.

- Put up those sparkly lights, inside and out.

For a $40 investment, even the most tired-looking home can look great at night.

- Decorate that tree tastefully and put up a door wreath – early.

Remember that buyers are looking for a home ... nothing like conveying that homey feeling with presents under the tree.

- Use more splashes of red than green because red is an emotionally appealing and warm colour.

- Display elegant centerpieces made from pinecones or other wintry pieces of nature.

- Have that wonderful “baked cookie” scent.

Set a plate of cookies on the counter, next to festive paper napkins for prospective buyers. If you don't bake cookies, simmer a cinnamon stick and cloves in water before buyers come for a great aroma. Or simmer spicy apple cider on the stove, and set out cups and a ladle.

There is nothing like showing a home at its sparkling best. Go against the trend – consider December!

Take a peek inside six gorgeous Westside homes decorated in festive style and help support Kids Help Phone – there are six pairs of tour tickets to give away!

Lavish Westside Vancouver homes, sumptuously decorated for the holidays – what could be more festive than that? Well, how about a tour of those homes, organized in support of children in need?

Homes for the Holidays is running its 10th Anniversary Tour on November 28 and 29, and all proceeds of the tour go to Kids Help Phone, a charity that offers 24-hour confidential and anonymous telephone support for children, 365 days a year.

Click here for more information: http://www.rew.ca/news/win-tickets-to-homes-for-the-holidays-2014-tour-1.1593679

Moving is a headache, specially the organizing and boxing part ...... BUT THE HELP IS COMING! 

http://vancouverinthebox.com/

The Finishing Edge Contracting

Mike Neufeld

thefinishingedgecontracting@gmail.com

Cell: 778-241-6710

Other: 604-996-4336

Office Hours:

Monday – Saturday

(various/flexible times)

If you have any questions or would like to discuss possible contracts or prices, please contact us.

Full Service Junk Removal

1-800-GOT-JUNK? offers full-service junk removal for your home or business including offices, retail locations, construction sites, and more. Our friendly team is happy to meet all your junk hauling needs, including:

Household Junk Removal: appliance, refrigerator, furniture removal and more
Office Junk Removal: computer, printer and monitor recycling
General Junk Removal: leaf, rubbish, garbage removal alternative and more

Contact Us

To book a job, please call us at 1-800-468-5865.

According to Mike Blaney's article at REW.ca, these are the most useful apps for Realtors:

The key to marketing success lies in focus and consistency creating a meaningful message and repeating it to those most receptive to it. The following five tools, in no particular order, are a combination of technological time savers and organizational tools to make your marketing programs and client contact easier to manage. Any Realtor will find them useful.

#1 Dropbox

Dropbox is simply a great tool to share documents with others, and store all of the stuff you need to keep. It is called cloud storage and is like having a second hard drive to store documents and photos. It is secure, easy to use and can be a real time saver.

From a client perspective it is a great way for a photographer to provide photos for your listings and in turn you can share listing photos with your clients or website provider. You never have to worry about sending emails that bounce because the attachments are too large.

Instead of filling up the hard drive on your computer with contracts, addenda and other documents of your previously closed deals, they can be stored on a service like Dropbox. You can also use it to sync files between your home PC, office PC and iPad.

If you are getting design work done or printed materials have the designer share proofs and finished material in Dropbox so you can review them from any computer or smartphone and in turn share the folder with anyone else involved.

#2 Evernote

Evernote is a fantastic tool for information gathering and storage. For a Realtor it can be real time saver and streamline your marketing efforts. You can clip articles, websites, images and content from any website and store it for easy retrieval from any device and any place. Great for gathering content for blog posts.

Keep notes about every conversation in specific client notebooks. Group notes by buyer name in a buyer notebook and keep qualification notes, consultation notes, property tour notes, negotiation notes and transaction notes, as well as all associated documents in one place.

Create a customized property tour including the MLS sheet of all homes customers will preview. Include hyperlinks to the map and a calendar entry for the associated showing times right inside one single note.

Forward all client-related emails directly to your Evernote account for a complete repository of all communications with your buyer over the course of the buying lifecycle in one, easily searchable place.

You can even snap a photo of your handwritten notes and send it to your clients Evernote account for review later.

#3 MailChimp

The MailChimp newsletter program is one of the top email marketing service providers around and it is free up to 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers a month. It is used so widely I don't think anyone ever gives a second thought to the MailChimp branding at the bottom of your emails. With one of the most complete platforms available MailChimp has proven itself as an extremely useful and effective email marketing provider. It has great analytics for tracking emails. Lots of templates to choose from and importing client information is intuitive.

MailChimp is excellent for "drip" email campaigns where you create a series of four emails that go to your new prospects on a timed basis. After you have met someone add them to the mailing list and the first email can go out the next day. A second email can be sent a few days later explaining more about the service you offer, what you do and inviting them to join your newsletter mailing list.

You can also set up a market update newsletter template that you email monthly to your mailing list just changing the statistics each time, but retaining the same look and feel.

You can create a signup form which you can add to your website to manage newsletter signups. They enter their information and it goes directly into the mailing list.

#4 Google My Business

Formerly Google Places For Business or Google+ Local, Google My Business is a new platform that makes it easy to manage all of your Google accounts in one place and add in your real estate business hours, photos of your company, and information about your services. This will not only help you get found better through organic searches, but also get more visibility for your Google+ profile.

Setting up Google My Business can easily improve your online presence for real estate by keeping your business information centrally located for Google. And as long as you continue to follow SEO best practices for your real estate website and Google+ page, this will boost your brand awareness and search optimization.

If you want to be found in a Google search for Vancouver Realtor as an example, setting up a Google My Business account is a key step in the process.

#5 Hootsuite

Social media is now a must-have for good real-estate marketing, and managing your various channels becomes much easier with Hootsuite. Think of it as a dashboard where you can monitor everything going on in your social media accounts and you can post to one or all from one place. It lets you update and keep track of your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media accounts all in one spot a huge time saver.

Hootsuite is particularly useful for Twitter. With Hootsuite, Twitter users can:

• Schedule tweets for specific times and dates.
• Tweet the same content from multiple Twitter accounts, simultaneously.
• Track retweets and mentions of user-selected hashtags or keywords.
• Track tweets that mention you or a topic you are interested in on any or all of your Twitter accounts.

There are many more tools out there, but these are the ones we feel are most practical for most Realtors. If you have any favourites, please share them in the comments below.

Hello Friends of i❤homes.ca, Please join our coloring contest!!!

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Draw the outside, add your favorite Back to School characters, and decorate the inside with your own personal style, make it sparkle!!!

wins!  By entering the contest you are giving us permission to display your work on our facebook & twitter page

“Color your way Back to School”

www.ilovehomes.ca Coloring Contest

I love School!!

Email to info@ilovehomes.ca or text pic to 778.241.8946

All entries must be received by September 30, 2014 to be considered.