buying a house Tag

Well today was closing day.  Sort of.  At least it was supposed to be.  As it turns out, however there was an error in the mortgage paperwork that caused a delay in the final release of funds between the bank and our lawyer's office.  Despite everyone's feverish attempts to rectify things, ultimately the clock just ran out before the issue could be resolved. So here we are, at end of day with no keys in hand.  :-(  Closing is being pushed until tomorrow and right out the gate our construction schedule is being delayed by a day

It's been a busy couple of days. We got all of the offer paperwork signed and finalized, made a quick trip in to the bank to pick up our pre-approval letter to satisfy our financing condition, then topped it off with a road trip to Ottawa to visit a friend and celebrate the Canada Day long weekend. It was our first time spending the holiday in the nation's capital and we had a blast! Definitely recommended if you've never experienced it before - so much to do and the fireworks on Parliament Hill were a spectacular end to the trip! Now

Sometimes to get what you want, you have to be willing to walk away - which is exactly what we did when offer negotiations with the seller of the house we wanted reached a stalemate. After flat out rejecting our initial offer (which was admittedly WELL below his rather inflated asking price), it was pretty clear that talks between his agent and ours were going nowhere fast. When it came right down to it, he had his bottom line which was 10K above what we decided our ceiling would be for that property. Refusing to overpay, we chose to be firm

Ugh! Home owners can be so frustrating! Don't get me wrong, it's TOTALLY understandable to be emotionally attached to your house, but seriously - Pricing a home for sale is a science. You can't just arbitrarily pick a number that you want to sell for just BECAUSE. These things have to be based in reality. Lot size, square footage, how many upgrades you've put in, comparable properties in the neighbourhood and their past sale prices - these are all things that you have to keep in mind when setting the right price for your home if you expect to sell. If you've

So after expanding our search area, we've found an interesting property in the West Shore neighbourhood. The house itself isn't much to look at. In fact it probably hasn't been updated much since it was built in 1962. Now in saying that we don't mean the cool 'retro chic 60s', we mean circa 1962 textured plaster walls, parquet & vinyl floors, avocado tub in the bathroom - we're talking full on time machine the second you walk through the door. Not exactly what you might envision us looking for in our dream house. So what, pray tell is so 'interesting' about