Real Estate Blog

Insurance policies make for pretty dry reading and not many have read their insurance contract line by line.  So it’s easy to get caught should you violate your policy or find out you’re not covered for certain things.

You might however like to education yourself about particular clauses that might eliminate your protection while renovating your home.  Things like a broken water pipe while doing your upstairs bathroom that drenches everything below it, or if you live in a condo, you downstairs neighbour’s unit.  No one wants to go through the whole rigmarole of submitting a complicated claim only to have it denied by your insurer.

You might like to call your insurance company and tell them you’re planning a renovation but this is not a 100%

What has made some of this city’s luxury neighbourhoods the way they are?  Was it history?  Did neighbourhoods evolve into luxury communities?  It’s a chicken-and-egg scenario as to what came first – the location or the plan.

Inner-city

Mount Royal was one of Calgary’s first luxury neighbourhoods.  Calgary’s elite settled in Mount Royal, just south of 17 Ave SW, in the early 20th Century.  It started out as American Hill, with large estate homes on huge lots, complete with carriage houses.  The real estate crash that occurred during the First World War in Calgary caused many to lose their homes, followed by the Great Depression.  It would have been easy for this neighbourhood to crumble and to age in place.  Somehow, this neighbourhood managed to

You have a shrine to the ’89 Saskatchewan Rough Riders in your home office.  And, you paid a lot of money at a fundraiser five years ago for a signed Iginla jersey, framed and hanging proudly in your front hall.  Or, there’s that Jacques Plante replica mask that your dad wanted you to have.

Now, you’re going to list your home and the home staging company you’ve hired thinks you need to put away this unnecessary clutter so as not to offend potential buyers as they parade through your home.

What?  Unnecessary CLUTTER??

As traitorous to your team it might be and disloyal to the memory of those who gifted you with such wonderful memories, if you want to play the real estate game it’s best to neutralize the playing field.

You simply can’t guarantee

There are some deep discounts right now in Calgary when it comes to the luxury home market.  By asking the right questions, you may just get the home of your dreams for even less than what it’s currently listed and provide tremendous peace of mind.

Ask lots of questions when you’re out looking at resale homes; not just the ones listed below.  Be prepared before you go to the showings that your agent has lined up for you. You will likely not meet the owners of the properties that you’re looking at, but your real estate professional should either have the answers or be able to get your questions answered in a respectable amount of time. 

Why are you selling?

There are plenty of reasons why luxury home owners are looking to sell.  They could be

Bowness Park has been a destination in Calgary for more than 100 years.  From the time that John Hextall convinced the city to run a streetcar out to the park, to the long-gone amusement park and pony rides to the Great Bow River Raft Race, also a distant memory, Bowness Park is a treasured Calgary resource.

Even the floods of 2013 weren’t enough to keep people away.  Improvements and redevelopment of the park continues, ensuring that the park will come back better than ever.  In just a few weeks’ time, a new restaurant – the first in many years – will open its doors in Bowness Park. 

Seasons of Bowness is on track to open in the former Parkside Café kiosk right on the lagoon.  If you’re familiar with the building, it has lots of windows and a deck,

Mild temperatures are promoting spread of terrible hedge pest.

It’s called oystershell scale and its claim to fame is killing off hedges and bushes.  Especially cotoneaster, a hardy bush which can endure harsh prairie winters but is very susceptible to this ravenous aphid-like bug.

If the weather was very cold and there was more snow, only a small number of the bugs would survive.  Large amounts of rain will also slow it down and Calgary experienced a warm fall as well.

As it stands, last summer’s population will probably multiply in devastating numbers, especially in some of Calgary’s older districts like Inglewood. It has also been invading some other communities along the Bow River, such as Riverbend and Douglasdale.

Cotoneasters have a

It was a huge problem in the 1980s when interest rates were an astronomical 20% and folks were leaving Alberta to find work elsewhere. Half a million people left the province, and left their properties because payments were too high and mortgage balances were higher than the value of the property. So, if you couldn’t sell - what was a person to do?

Those days may be back in Alberta – sans the high mortgage rate.  Job loss is the new culprit.

You may see headlines that say that “jingle mail” is back.  That’s the jingle of a ring of house keys in an envelope on its way back to the mortgage lender. Anyone who needs to walk away from a situation like this has got to be out of ideas. 

It’s important to weigh the consequences of a desperate act like a

There’s always a silver living, isn’t there?  Last year, as reported here in this blog, Calgary luxury homes valued in excess of $1 million fell by 41% in 2015 over the previous year.  That’s old news.

The good news is that as a result of the drop in list prices, or correction as some would like to call it, sales activities in the luxury home segment of the housing market is expected to rise.

Recently, a home in the Calgary area which was originally valued at $8 million plus in 2011 sold for approximately $3.5 million.  It was all over Facebook. This example is the extreme and not all luxury homes in Calgary are expected to see such dramatic decreases in value.

Some Calgary real estate experts believe that luxury property owners, observing the

Yoga is more than an exercise trend.  It provides relaxation, fitness, flexibility and is an important part of your healthy work-life balance. Perhaps you’ve wanted to take up yoga but find it difficult to get to a class with a fixed start and end time because it doesn’t fit with your schedule.   Consider having private instruction in your home or office.

One-on-one instruction into this ancient practice is actually the way yoga was supposed to be studied.  It was shared between teacher and student, and together they worked towards gaining personal awareness and achieving potential, with the yogi present as a guide and mentor on the journey to self-actualization.

The benefits of private instruction are many.  Your current level of fitness is taken

Home sales last year in the luxury market fell off the map.

Disappointing especially since 2014 was a banner year when it came to sales of homes over $1 million.

In reviewing the past year, the Calgary Real Estate Board reports that just 511 homes in this high-end category sold in 2015 which was the lowest number of luxury homes to be sold since 2011.  In the year previous, 846 homes changed hands.

CREB®’s go-to chief economist, Ann-Marie Lurie, told Calgary media that the numbers for 2015 were no surprise to anyone in the industry.  She cites employment figures in high-paying jobs as the bad guy in this luxury sales scenario, noting that any job gains in 2015 were in the construction and business service sectors which typically offer salaries