Ajax Pickering Real Estate Blog

Archive for the ‘Condos’ Category

Jeremy Torobin – CTV News

Canada’s economy expanded for a third straight month in November, as mining, energy and wholesale trade helped pull the country further out of recession.

The 0.4% growth in the month, reported Friday by Statistics Canada, was more than economists expected. The federal statistics gathering agency also revised October’s growth figure up to 0.3%, from the initially reported 0.2%. September’s reading was also revised up a tenth of a percentage point.

November’s data indicates the economy – which grew just 0.4% in the third quarter – is on track to meet or exceed the Bank of Canada’s 3.3% growth estimate for the final three months of 2009, economists said.

“It’s certainly an indication that the economy picked up a lot of steam in the last quarter,” said Millan Mulraine, an economics strategist at TD Securities in Toronto. “We didn’t see it coming; we never thought it would be at this level so early.”

Even a flat reading for December would yield a pace approaching 4% annual growth for the October-through-December period, Mr. Mulraine and economists such as Doug Porter of BMO Nesbitt Burns said.

Mining, and oil and gas extraction and wholesale trade accounted for about 60% of economic growth in November, Statistics Canada said in its monthly report on Canada’s gross domestic product.

Construction rose for a fourth straight month, expanding 1.1% largely because of a 2.5% increase in the residential sector. The country’s hot home resale market led to a 0.7% increase in output from real estate agents and brokers, Statistics Canada said.

Also, “strong activity” in the bond market and a spike in sales of mutual funds pushed the finance and insurance sector up 1.2%.

Despite the gains, gross domestic product was down 1.7% in November from a year earlier, but that year-over-year gap was almost 3% the month before.

The central bank said in its Jan. 21 quarterly forecast that companies continue to have plenty of excess capacity and predicted the economy won’t be running at full tilt until the third quarter of 2011, in part because of the effect Canada’s strong currency is having on sales to the U.S. and overseas.

Canada’s beleaguered manufacturing industry stalled in November after an anemic 0.1-per-cent gain the previous month, retail trade fell 0.8% after at least five months of increases, and the utilities sector contracted by 1.8% as unseasonably warm weather reduced demand for electricity and natural gas heating.

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy grew a more-than-expected 5.7% in the last quarter of 2009, according to a preliminary estimate released Friday by the Commerce Department in Washington. Though the gain was largely attributed to factories replenishing inventories, should that number hold it would be the biggest quarterly annualized gain in six years.

That bodes well for Canadian growth going forward because it suggests demand for exports to the U.S. could pick up sooner than anticipated as America’s shell-shocked consumers recover further and spend more.

The Bank of Canada says the domestic economy will expand 2.9% this year, a slightly rosier prediction than the 2.6% forecast issued by the International Monetary Fund this week.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information  -  416-388-1960

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A new report says residential construction investment hit a new record in the third quarter, reaching $24.3 billion.

That’s nine per cent more than the same quarter in 2006.

Statistics Canada says there were increases in new housing (up 10.1%), renovations (8.4%) and acquisition costs (5.7%).

Spending for new residential construction climbed to $12.4 billion, a 10.1% increase over the third quarter of 2006.

Single-family home investment made the most significant contribution to the growth, increasing 10.9% to $7.9 billion.

Apartment and condominium construction increased 6.2% to $2.6 billion, while investment in double and row housing also rose significantly, gaining 18.4% and 16.2% respectively.

The agency says the rising levels of investments for new housing were largely brought about by significant cost increases over the third quarter of 2006.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416-388-1960

Before buying your home, find out what’s covered and what’s not

By Nadia Dalimonte, Articling Student, LAWPRO
From New Dream Homes and Condos Magazine

When it comes to the single largest investment most of us will make – buying a home – you want to make sure you’ve protected that investment to the best of your ability.

Why even consider title insurance? Because the unexpected can and does happen. The most typical situation in which homebuyers call on their title insurance policies involves unpaid utility or realty tax bills from the previous owner. The second most frequent category of claims relates to building code issues. For example, a couple buys a house planning to add a new wing to their home. When the building inspector arrives for an on-site inspection, he discovers that an earlier renovation was not done to code, and the whole home needs to be rewired. If the owners have a title insurance policy in place, the insurer could compensate the homeowners for the costs of bringing the electrical work up to code.

Title insurance also protects homeowners if the house is not located on the property accurately and encroaches onto neighboring land, or if a pool has been built that is actually on a neighbour’s property. A title insurer could resolve this problem by buying the piece of land that the house (or pool) actually sits on from the neighbour, and taking care of all the related legal work.

Condominium owners have also found title insurance protection useful. Take the example of a newly built condominium unit purchase. The buyer of a particular unit is shocked to find out that the unit purchased is a different unit from the one that he or she was expecting to buy. Unfortunately, the unit actually acquired is worth less because it does not have a “lakefront” view. In this instance, the legal services coverage available through the TitlePLUS policy was called on, and the buyer was compensated for the difference in value between the unit he took possession to, and the unit he thought he had bought. This legal service coverage, which protects you for losses suffered as a result of the negligent errors of your lawyer, is generally not available from most other title insurance companies.

Title insurance can also benefit you in other ways: It can eliminate the need for an up-to-date survey while protecting you against any title-related issues that would have been identified by that survey.

For many buyers, the fraud coverage provided by title insurance is particularly reassuring: it not only helps protect you if you are the victim of fraud, but also pays the costs involved in defending your ownership in the property and restoring your title to the home.

As with any type of insurance policy, certain exclusions will apply. Typical issues not covered include native land claims, environmental hazards and the buyer’s rights to change the use of the land or undertake renovations or construction. Problems the buyer agreed to in the purchase agreement or failed to disclose to the lawyer will also not be covered. It is therefore vital that you tell your lawyer of any problems that your agent told you about or that came to light when you visited the property. As well, individual policies may contain exceptions specific to the homebuyers’ property. For example, minor utility easements or rights-of-way for a mutual driveway may be specifically listed as exceptions to coverage.

Bear in mind that, in general, if the problem is not a “legal problem,” it is likely not covered. Title insurance provides protection against title-related problems; it is not home warranty insurance, and will not protect you if your fridge breaks down or the furnace gets old. As with any insurance purchase, you should consult the policy for full details of the actual terms and conditions and have your real estate lawyer advise you. When purchasing a home, your real estate lawyer can help you sort out the various protections offered by different title insurance companies in order to get an idea of which risks are covered and which are excluded.

To help homebuyers better understand the benefits of title insurance, and the important role of a lawyer in a real estate transaction, TitlePLUS insurance has created a free Real Simple Real Estate Guide. You can access the guide by going to www.titleplus.ca.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416-388-1960