Stop Sticking It To Us!

Canadian consumers paid over $4.5 billion in hidden credit card fees last year. Now these companies want to raise these skyrocketing hidden fees.

Big Credit Card companies need to stop sticking it to us.

Help fight back!

March 26, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Real Estate is the new RRSP

This year we're spending our RRSPs. With stocks and bonds yielding so little returns, more and more Canadians are taking their savings and splurging on second homes, boats and renovations.
by Andrew Wills

Sam Cohen knows all the arguments in favour of sinking his savings into an RRSP. He has been a financial adviser in Toronto for the past 10 years, helping clients pick the mutual funds that are supposed to finance their golden years.

But somewhere along the way, Mr. Cohen lost the faith. Six years ago, he stopped making his annual contribution to a mutual-fund-filled registered retirement savings plan. Instead, he started investing directly in real estate. He has never looked back.

Mr. Cohen has bought and sold raw land, and doubled his money. He has been in and out of condos, and is up 40 per cent for his troubles. He picked up a dump of a house and renovated it himself, and expects to double up on that holding too. All told, he has built a $1-million real-estate portfolio.

"I'm not playing a real-estate boom," Mr. Cohen says. "I'm sticking to properties because I believe that I can do better this way than by trying to pick the right stocks and funds in an RRSP."

An increasing number of Canadians share Mr. Cohen's view. As Canadians rush to file their tax returns before May 2, more than 60 per cent of the population will leave line 208 blank -- that's the box on the tax form set aside for RRSP deductions.

Real estate is in vogue, everything from buying a first home, to moving to something bigger, to renovating. So is splurging -- purchasing a cottage, or a boat, or a dream vacation. Saving for retirement, in a conventional stocks-and-bonds plan, is definitely on the outs.

The number of citizens who contribute to RRSPs has been in steady decline since the stock market melted down in 2000. Fewer than six million taxpayers set aside money in their RRSPs last year, or roughly one in three of those eligible, according to numbers compiled by Statistics Canada. Just five years ago, when Nortel Networks could do no wrong and markets were booming, close to 6.29 million people contributed to retirement plans.

RRSPs soaked up $29.3-billion of our savings in 2000. That was down to $27.6-billion last year. So not only are fewer people using RRSPs, but those who do are saving less. These plans are the only significant break left for a tax-weary population. The rules allow us to set aside up to 18 per cent of what we earned last year, to a limit of $15,500.

Well, the average contribution last year was $2,600. Those living in Alberta and B.C. set aside closer to $3,000, while savings in the four Atlantic provinces came in closer to $2,000. When tax returns are filed on May 2, there will be 18 million Canadians walking around with extra room left in their RRSPs -- fewer than one person in 10 maxes out their contributions.

The folks in the financial trenches understand what has happened.

"Many investors have soured on markets, and it's hard to blame them," said Charlie Spiring, founder and CEO of brokerage house Wellington West Capital, in Winnipeg. "There's been a debacle in the funds, first with the poor performance, then all the issues around malfeasance, with [New York Attorney-General Eliot] Spitzer on the warpath."

Like many industry experts, Mr. Spiring sees larger social forces at play in the move away from RRSPs. He has firsthand experience with clients who would rather enjoy their money today than sock it away for tomorrow. People work hard, and as a reward, many opt for something tangible, some sort of instant gratification, rather than the delayed pleasure of retirement income.

"The Manitoba government opened up a few new lakes for cottages this year, and there was a stampede of buyers. You just know some of those people were spending cash that they otherwise would have socked into their savings," Mr. Spiring said. "With older, more affluent individuals who are still working, there's a tendency to spend money in order to build the kind of retirement that they've always dreamed of."

Cottages aren't the only indulgence going.

At the Beaconsfield Yacht Club, in the Montreal suburbs, you will find a former Air Canada executive in his late 50s -- he asked not to be named -- who dropped $10,000 of his recent severance package on a used C&C 24-foot sailboat, rather than putting it all into a retirement fund.

April 29, 2005 in Watching the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

No longer just commuter land

Western GTA doesn't have to play second fiddle to Toronto anymore
by DEREK RAYMAKER

The city of Mississauga has struggled for years to shake off its reputation as merely a bedroom community, and it seems the label may finally be put to rest. But the path over the last few years has been rocky.

By the end of the 1990s it appeared as if Mississauga was coming into its own as a mature, self-sustaining city. It was the sixth largest urban area in Canada and home to a growing number of white-collar industries fleeing the high costs of Toronto.

What Mississauga lacked and dearly coveted was a city core. There was no single zone where you could easily find residents, shops and public spaces combined within a well-planned and walkable corridor.

Luckily, the area around the gargantuan Square One shopping centre at Burnhamthorpe Road and Hurontario Street was ripe to be moulded into a city centre. Various levels of government did their part by establishing a cultural hub encompassing the Living Arts Centre, the Civic Centre and the Mississauga Art Gallery, and providing the incentives for convention-ready hotels and a sleek new YMCA. It's also situated right between Highway 401 and the Cooksville GO station.

By 2001, it was up to the condominium developers to establish attractive high-density suites to bring in the last piece of the puzzle: residents.

In September of that year, Tridel Corp. and Dorsay Development were preparing to launch a two-tower, 31-storey, 880-suite joint venture called Ovation, and the first of its kind to riff off of a vibrant Mississauga city centre as an attraction. The sales pace was going to indicate if the city centre concept had legs, or if it was going to be another in a long line of hard sells for 905 condominiums.

Days later, on the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks in the United States seemed to bring an abrupt end to the optimism that was behind such grand growth schemes as the city centre, or so the economists and analysts predicted.

But three weeks after the terrorist attacks, over 200 suites were sold in Ovation, establishing a sales record that still stands in Mississauga, and setting the stage for an avalanche of new projects to populate the city centre.

The success of the city centre area indicates that Mississauga has matured as a residential market to the point where it can support large high-density developments, according to Mimi Ng, a senior market analyst for N. Barry Lyon Consultants, which provides market research to the condominium development industry.

"There have been a lot of younger first-time buyers buying into that area, and they probably work in Mississauga and west Toronto too because there is a large amount of office employment in that area," Ms. Ng said.

Mississauga's urban planners have targeted the city centre to absorb an enormous rate of population growth over the next 20 years. According to the 2001 census, the area had a population of 6,940, but the city expects that number to grow to 16,700 by 2011 and then to 21,300 by 2021, a 209-per-cent increase over 20 years.

Since 2001, over 15 projects have been launched in the city centre adding up to nearly 5,000 units. The key difference between this condo building spree and the one in downtown Toronto is that most of the city centre suites have been sold.

"A lot of this population growth will be through high-density condominium development," Ms. Ng said. "They're really pushing the city centre node because they realize they are running out of greenfield supply," alluding to the term for vacant land out of which subdivisions are carved.

Ms. Ng said 10 years ago, you'd be hard pressed to give away land in this area. "Mississauga is the first area in the 905 that's matured to the point where it could sustain the demand for high-density housing and become a distinct submarket."

Mississauga city centre is also seen as a more attractive building site for many developers because planners have been quite permissive when it comes to building heights, Ms. Ng added. This has led not only to taller buildings, but also more multi-phased projects, where buildings can share recreational facilities, outdoor spaces and fitness centres.

January 24, 2005 in Location, Location ... | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Toronto Underground

Urban explorers feel attraction of subterranean world below
by JOHN SAUNDERS

People you pass on the street undoubtedly entertain all manner of fantasies. Some, like Phil Goldsmith, think about the hidden world beneath them.''Sometimes, when I'm walking around in Toronto, I just for fun imagine that the ground plane is transparent,'' the 55-year-old architect says. ''People would get vertigo at some places, were the ground actually transparent, because some of the subterranean elements are so deep.

"What you're walking on feels like solid ground, but what you're actually walking on is this skin -- this crust -- over top of cavernous basements that go down five or six levels."

It's a city beneath the city -- the veins, arteries, ganglia and bowels of the surface world.

Parts of it are familiar to hundreds of thousands of Torontonians: the subway platforms and tunnels (rectangular where trenched, round where bored), the shops, food courts and passages of the PATH pedestrian maze, the parking labyrinths (some of them eight levels deep) under the big downtown buildings, and the below-track concourse at Union Station where, legend has it, live-at-home lovebirds in 1930s Toronto would cop a smooch while pretending to meet after long journeys.

Other parts are known to fewer: a truck elevator at First Canadian Place that takes highway-sized tractor-trailer rigs to a subterranean reception area beneath the city's tallest office tower; the cavernous loading docks below Eaton Centre; 17 radiation treatment machines in concrete bunkers under Princess Margaret Hospital; a long-abandoned Bay Lower subway station, available for movie shoots, where giant mutant people-eating cockroaches stalked but, as luck would have it, did not eat Mira Sorvino in the 1997 creature feature Mimic.

The maps to this world are the utility diagrams used by repair crews, engineers and architects such as Mr. Goldsmith, founder of a Toronto firm with a specialty in historical preservation.

"You look at these drawings and there's layers and layers of water pipes and sewer pipes and gas lines and hydro trunks and telephone trunks and storm sewers and sanitary sewers and so on," Mr. Goldsmith said. "There's just this vast array of pipes that form this organized but very, very complicated layer of spaghetti that goes down quite far in spots.

"If you want to think about the streets, the streets are like these little elevated causeways. If you joined all of the basements of all of buildings downtown, the real ground plane is down three or four storeys and the streets are these little causeways of dirt filled with pipes and wires snaking between all of these basements. I have fun with that one sometimes."

Visiting such places -- that is, trespassing on them -- is a passion shared by even smaller numbers, some of them within a sub-basement subculture known as urban explorers. One is a Toronto office worker with the Web name Ninjalicious who chronicles his feats in a self-published newsletter called Infiltration, "the zine about going places you're not supposed to go."

"I actually tried to run a contest in my magazine once that was called 'How low can you go?' " he said. "It was like, submit your story of the deepest you've ever gotten in Toronto, but the most interesting answers were just really deep parking garages, so it wasn't that interesting."

Like Mr. Goldsmith, he marvels at the tangle of phone lines, hydro lines, fibre-optic cables, steam pipes, water pipes, gas pipes, ducts, conduits, vaults, chambers, drains and sewers under the street, some of which he inspected during construction of the Sheppard subway line, now two years old.

"When they tore up Yonge and Sheppard, that was one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen," he said.

"Like how deep they had to dig to get at everything. The pit must have been seven storeys down at Yonge and Sheppard, and so full of so much stuff, wiring and piping.

"They just had to relocate all of it. First they had to move it all to the left and build and then they had to move it all to the right and build it back. I'm sure that's where most of the billions of dollars that were spent on that project were consumed, at that one intersection, because it was unbelievable."

He speaks not as a sidewalk superintendent, he specifies, but as one who repeatedly donned hard hat and safety vest to go down the hole. "Yeah, I followed that from beginning to end. All the time. There were some areas that I couldn't get to unless workers were there, so I had to do it during the daytime."

The underbelly of Yonge and Sheppard underlines one thing above-ground and below-ground Toronto have in common: Space is tight.

"Real estate is at a premium in the underground, especially in the downtown core," said Greg Atkinson, head of underground reactive repairs for Toronto Hydro.

"If we run into a very congested area, what we will do is try to make the cable chamber larger . . . but the designers are very pressed as to the dimensions they can make these things based on what's buried in the ground between gas and Bell and water."

December 29, 2004 in Mortgage Financing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Working with Real Estate Agents

When buying or selling real estate, you may find it helpful to have a real estate agent assist you. Real estate agents can provide many useful services and work with you in different ways. In some real estate transactions, the agents work for the seller. In others, the seller and buyer may each have agents. And sometimes the same agents work for both the buyer and the seller. It is important for you to know whether an agent is working for you as your agent or simply working with you while acting as an agent of the other party.

This article addresses the various types of working relationships that may be available to you. It should help you decide which relationship you want to have with a real estate agent. It will also give you useful information about the various services real estate agents can provide buyers and sellers, and it will help explain how real estate agents are paid.

SELLERS

Seller's Agent

If you are selling real estate, you may want to "list" your property for sale with a real estate firm. If so, you will sign a "listing agreement" authorizing the firm and its agents to represent you in your dealings with buyers as your seller's agent. You may also be asked to allow agents from other firms to help find a buyer for your property.

Be sure to read and understand the listing agreement before you sign it.

Duties to Seller:

The listing firm and its agents must

Once you have signed the listing agreement, the firm and its agents may not give any confidential information about you to prospective buyers or their agents without your permission so long as they represent you. But until you sign the listing agreement, you should avoid telling the listing agent anything you would not want a buyer to know.

Services and Compensation:

To help you sell your property, the listing firm and its agents will offer to perform a number of services for you. These may include

For representing you and helping you sell your property, you will pay the listing firm a sales commission or fee. The listing agreement must state the amount or method for determining the commission or fee and whether you will allow the firm to share its commission with agents representing the buyer.

Dual Agent

You may even permit the listing firm and its agents to represent you and a buyer at the same time. This "dual agency relationship" is most likely to happen if an agent with your listing firm is working as a buyer's agent with someone who wants to purchase your property. If this occurs and you have not already agreed to a dual agency relationship in your listing agreement, your listing agent will ask you to sign a separate agreement or document permitting the agent to act as agent for both you and the buyer.

It may be difficult for a dual agent to advance the interests of both the buyer and seller. Nevertheless, a dual agent must treat buyers and sellers fairly and equally. Although the dual agent owes them the same duties, buyers and sellers can prohibit dual agents from divulging certain confidential information about them to the other party.

Some firms also offer a form of dual agency called "designated agency" where one agent in the firm represents the seller and another agent represents the buyer. This option (when available) may allow each "designated agent" to more fully represent each party.

If you choose the "dual agency" option, remember that since a dual agent's loyalty is divided between parties with competing interests, it is especially important that you have a clear understanding of

BUYERS

When buying real estate, you may have several choices as to how you want a real estate firm and its agents to work with you. For example, you may want them to represent only you (as a buyer's agent). You may be willing for them to represent both you and the seller at the same time (as a dual agent). Or you may agree to let them represent only the seller (seller's agent or subagent). Some agents will offer you a choice of these services. Others may not.

Buyer's Agent

Duties to Buyer:

If the real estate firm and its agents represent you, they must

Once you have agreed (either orally or in writing) for the firm and its agents to be your buyer's agent, they may not give any confidential information about you to sellers or their agents without your permission so long as they represent you. But until you make this agreement with your buyer's agent, you should avoid telling the agent anything you would not want a seller to know.

Unwritten Agreements:

To make sure that you and the real estate firm have a clear understanding of what your relationship will be and what the firm will do for you, you may want to have a written agreement. However, some firms may be willing to represent and assist you for a time as a buyer's agent without a written agreement. But if you decide to make an offer to purchase a particular property, the agent must obtain a written agency agreement. If you do not sign it, the agent can no longer represent and assist you and is no longer required to keep information about you confidential. Furthermore, if you later purchase the property through an agent with another firm, the agent who first showed you the property may seek compensation from the other firm.

Be sure to read and understand any agency agreement before you sign it.

Services and Compensation:

Whether you have a written or unwritten agreement, a buyer's agent will perform a number of services for you. These may include helping you

If you have a written agency agreement, the agent can also help you prepare and submit a written offer to the seller.

A buyer's agent can be compensated in different ways. For example, you can pay the agent out of your own pocket. Or the agent may seek compensation from the seller or listing agent first, but require you to pay if the listing agent refuses. Whatever the case, be sure your compensation arrangement with your buyer's agent is spelled out in a buyer agency agreement before you make an offer to purchase property and that you carefully read and understand the compensation provision.

Dual Agent

You may permit an agent or firm to represent you and the seller at the same time. This "dual agency relationship" is most likely to happen if you become interested in a property listed with your buyer's agent or the agent's firm. If this occurs and you have not already agreed to a dual agency relationship in your (written or oral) buyer agency agreement, your buyer's agent will ask you to sign a separate agreement or document permitting him or her to act as agent for both you and the seller. It may be difficult for a dual agent to advance the interests of both the buyer and seller. Nevertheless, a dual agent must treat buyers and sellers fairly and equally. Although the dual agent owes them the same duties, buyers and sellers can prohibit dual agents from divulging certain confidential information about them to the other party.

Some firms also offer a form of dual agency called "designated agency" where one agent in the firm represents the seller and another agent represents the buyer. This option (when available) may allow each "designated agent" to more fully represent each party.

If you choose the "dual agency" option, remember that since a dual agent's loyalty is divided between parties with competing interests, it is especially important that you have a clear understanding of

This can best be accomplished by putting the agreement in writing at the earliest possible time.

Seller's Agent Working With a Buyer

If the real estate agent or firm that you contact does not offer buyer agency or you do not want them to act as your buyer agent, you can still work with the firm and its agents. However, they will be acting as the seller's agent (or "subagent"). The agent can still help you find and purchase property and provide many of the same services as a buyer's agent. The agent must be fair with you and provide you with any "material facts" (such as a leaky roof) about properties.

But remember, the agent represents the seller—not you— and therefore must try to obtain for the seller the best possible price and terms for the seller's property. Furthermore, a seller's agent is required to give the seller any information about you (even personal, financial or confidential information) that would help the seller in the sale of his or her property. Agents must tell you in writing if they are sellers' agents before you say anything that can help the seller. But until you are sure that an agent is not a seller's agent, you should avoid saying anything you do not want a seller to know.

Sellers' agents are compensated by the sellers.

December 17, 2004 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Record year for Toronto sales

November brings Toronto Real Estate Market to a Record Year

The Toronto real estate market regained its momentum in November, finishing as the resale market's best November on record with 6,301 transactions.

November also resulted in the best year ever for the Toronto resale market with one month to go. So far this year there have been 79,382 sales as compared to 78,898 in 2003, the previous best year on record. It is anticipated that the month of December will add another 4,000 sales to this year's total.

"Throughout part of the fall we were beginning to see signs that the market was moderating but November's final result is evidence that moving into the New Year, the market will likely be full steam ahead," said Toronto Real Estate Board President Ron Abraham.

As compared to the previous best November, which occurred last year, November 2004 was up eight per cent. Sales increased evenly throughout all Greater Toronto Area neighbourhoods.

Prices in November declined by two per cent as compared to the previous month, which is encouraging news for buyers.

"One of the most effective tools our members have to serve their buyer clients is the Prospect Match function in our MLS. It matches their clients' needs to properties listed and automatically generates emails to those buyers nightly. Everyday, approximately 80,000 Prospect Matches are processed."

Consumers also have plenty of choices with regard to the REALTOR they select. The Toronto Real Estate Board's membership exceeded 21,000 REALTORS last month.

"More professionals are becoming attracted to our business because it is widely recognized that real estate continues to be the engine driving our economy."

December 4, 2004 in Watching the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

Toronto builder's websites

The following links will take you to some interesting Builder's websites:

www.collegeparkcondos.com
www.cityplace.ca
www.capriliving.com
www.baker-re.com/thepointe.htm
www.windermerebythelake.com
www.libertyvillageto.com
www.statebuildinggroup.com
www.empirecommunities.com
www.18yonge.com
www.highparkcondo.com
www.bellagiobloor.com
www.baker-re.com/hudson.htm
www.baker-re.com/18yorkville.htm
www.pembertongroup.com
www.comrost-felcorp.com
www.waterparkcity.ca
www.themonet.com
www.citygate.ca
www.1citycentre.com
www.waterclubcondos.com
www.empirecondominiums.com
www.dnacondos.com
www.canderelstoneridge.com
www.mls.ca
www.tridel.com
www.menkes.com
www.monarchgroup.com
www.canderelstoneridge.com

December 3, 2004 in Buying a Home | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sale of mansion for charity donation

A Toronto charity will be up $50,000 if a million-dollar mansion in Thornhill sells before Christmas Day.

Toronto real estate salesperson Jim Common has pledged to make the donation, out of his sales commission, to the CHUMCity Christmas Wish foundation if the house, at 34 Idleswift Dr. sells by Dec. 25. It's the third year he has made the pledge; both previous houses sold by the deadline.

"Christmas is for kids," Mr. Common said, "and I want to make as many Christmas wishes come true this year for Toronto's less fortunate children."

Mr. Common on, an 11-year veteran of the real estate world, also pledges to donate 1 per cent of his commissions to charity on every house he sells between now and Christmas Eve. It's all an effort to help charity and promote his business, he says.

Last year he beat his deadline on a $1.34-million home and the year before, he was successful with a $3-million mansion.

This year's home is a new, Tyndall stone 4,000-square-foot structure with rock gardens and flower beds.

November 25, 2004 in Agency Matters | Permalink | Comments (0)

 

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