Waterloo May Enact a "Rental License Bylaw" in 2011- How Will this Affect Owners?

A notice was sent out from the City of Waterloo regarding it's proposal to enact a bylaw requiring a business license to rent "residential units," not including apartments.

This may have a direct effect on anyone who currently owns, or is considering investing in, any type of residential property with a rental unit (rooming house, boarders, basements, bedrooms, etc...).

The City of Waterloo has been investigating in a program to license the business of renting residential units for the purposes of protecting the health, safety and welfare of residents in low-rise residential rental units. 

A report on a proposed rental licensing bylaw will be available on Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011 for public review and consideration. The report outlines a proposed new rental licensing system in the City of Waterloo for low-density residential units (not including apartments). Staff will table the report at City of Waterloo council on Monday, Jan. 10, 2011 for information. Following the release of the report to council, the public consultation phase for the report will begin. It is anticipated city council will consider a rental licensing bylaw in February.

I will be examining the proposed bylaw and attending the information session, so if you have any questions regarding this issue feel free to contact me anytime.

More Positive News on the Canadian Economy

It looks like we can expect interest rates to remain steady until next summer as the Canadian economy slowly moves forward in its recovery.

The article below is from Property Wire Canada:

The Canadian economy is well on its way to recovery, but has some distance to make up yet, according to a recently released outlook from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

According to the 2011 Economic Outlook report, the “Canadian economy has transitioned into a period of subdued growth.”

After showing strength in a rebound after the recession, Canada’s economy lost some of ground, expanding at a meagre 2.3 % annual rate in the Q2 of 2010 and one % in Q3.

“The Canadian economy is chugging along but not at full steam,” says Perrin Beatty, President and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. “A number of factors are expected to constrain growth below 2.5 per cent in 2011,” says Beatty.
Contributing factors for this forecast include: Canadian households focussing on paying off existing debt, and fixing debt problems rather than acquiring new debt; ensuing cooling of consumer confidence; the cooling of a hot Canadian housing market; the ending of fiscal stimulus; slowing US demand, and the rising of the Canadian dollar.

Looking forward, there is anticipation that business investment, particularly in machinery and equipment (M&E), is the likely leader in economic growth in 2011-12.

“With strong headwinds buffeting the economy and competitive pressures remaining fierce, it is encouraging to see the increased push by Canadian companies to invest in productivity-enhancing goods,” says Beatty.

M&E  imports saw  a 13-year high in October, and a number of factors will help with increased capital investment going forward, including the strong Canadian dollar, the continuation of low borrowing costs, high corporate cash balances and the elimination of tariffs on a range of M&E.

“We believe Canada’s relatively strong fundamentals-an enviable fiscal position, a strong banking system, widening interest rate differentials and favourable commodity prices-will save the loonie from excessive downside pressures. These forces should hold the Canadian dollar near and slightly above parity in 2011 and 2012,” says Beatty.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce believes that the Bank of Canada will not be active until the summer of 2011; they also feel that the overnight target rate will reach two % by the end of 2011 and three % by the end of 2012. This goes along with concerns about Global instability.

A Small Investment to Protect Your Family at Home

$30 Can Save Your Family's Life

Every year, especially in winter with furnaces, boilers and wood stoves going, there are tragic stories of people dying from carbon monoxide poisoning.  Luckily, this story (http://tinyurl.com/2ewmuxj) from the CBC News didn't result in any deaths, even though more than 30 people ended up being sent to the hospital.

At a very small cost when considering the lives and health of you and your family, is a plug-in carbon monoxide detector.

Even though current building code is to have a hardwired CO2 detector in newly built homes, they are almost always mounted on the ceiling and usually only on the top floor.

It is recommended to have one in bedrooms and one on each floor.  Also, because they are plug-ins, they are generally at knee level, which is preferrable because CO2 gas is heavier and builds up at floor level first.

Most plug-ins have a lifespan of 5 years or so once installed, so I usually mark the date I plug it in with a permanent marker so I know when to replace them.  This is just a general suggestion, so always follow the manufacturer's recommendations.

I am not promoting this particular store, but here is a link (http://tinyurl.com/2bqk2ec) to a decent brand name detector that costs less than $30 and sometimes goes on sale for as low as $20.

Take the time to pick up a couple new ones to replace your outdated ones or install them if you don't have any - it's nice peace of mind to start off the New Year.

Happy New Year everyone...

Why is Canada's Recovery linked to the U.S.? This Maclean's article explains.

In our global economy it is important to know what is happening elsewhere, particularly with our BIGGEST trade partner representing 3/4 of our export market.

Here is a comprehensive and well-written article from Maclean's Magazine outlining how intertwined our Canadian economic recovery is with the U.S. and their level of recovery.

Recovery? You bet.

By: Jason Kirby

Over the Thanksgiving weekend in the United States, retailers experienced their best sales gains in four years, surprising many analysts.

With the flood of facts and figures that rush by every day, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when it comes to the American economic machine. For every batch of positive news confirming a recovery, it takes just one bad jobs report or trigger-happy dictator in North Korea to plunge us back into doom and gloom. But Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, and someone who studied recessions and recoveries for two decades, has a message for anyone with an interest in seeing the U.S. economy get back on its feet. “The revival is right in front of us,” he says. “Overall economic growth is about to accelerate.”

Signs of America’s resurgence abound. Shoppers surprised analysts during the Thanksgiving weekend—they helped drive retailers to their best sales gains in four years. They’ve also begun to indulge again, driving strong revenues at companies like Starbucks and cosmetics giant Estée Lauder. At the same time, manufacturers have enjoyed a resurgence of late. Sales and exports are both up. It’s all helped boost America’s top line. In November, third-quarter GDP was revised up to 2.5 per cent from two per cent—the fastest growth rate the U.S. has seen since the end of 2006.

All of this is vital for the Canadian economy. Last week, the Bank of Canada held steady on interest rates, leaving the overnight rate at one per cent. While the U.S. economy is revving up again, Canada has lagged. In the third quarter, GDP growth fell to one per cent, half the rate seen in the second quarter. Despite seeing an increase in exports to China, the U.S. is still the destination for nearly 75 per cent of Canada’s exports, so a strong rebound in that economy will help us immensely. At the same time, fears over the U.S. economy helped drive down the value of the greenback, hurting manufacturers here whose goods, priced in soaring Canadian dollars, have become more expensive. As things improve south of the border, that should take some of the air out of the loonie and lift trade.

Canada also stands to benefit from the recent compromise between President Barack Obama and Republican legislators to extend Bush-era tax cuts and unemployment benefits. As a result, economists at the Bank of Montreal now expect Canada’s economy to grow 2.7 per cent, up from 2.4 per cent. “The compromise stimulus deal is a welcome boost for the U.S. economy, household and business confidence, and, by extension, Canadian trade,” Sherry Cooper, BMO’s chief economist, wrote in a report.

Yet the U.S. job market continues to cast a dark shadow. In November, just 39,000 new jobs were created, far below analysts’ estimates, while the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 per cent. But even here there are reasons to believe the job market could turn positive a lot faster than expected. For one thing, companies are hiring again. According to the U.S. Labor Department, the number of job vacancies jumped by 351,000 to 3.36 million in October, the highest level since August 2008. It’s a safe bet that figure has risen even more since then.

On the ground, a shift is under way. In the rust-belt city of Dayton, Ohio, local businesses have an immediate need to hire thousands of new workers. “We are starting to see growth, job opportunities and more consumer confidence than we’ve seen in the past couple of years,” says Chris Kershner, with the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce. In Richmond, Va., online job site SnagAJob.com has seen the number of listings double from last year. “It’s been awhile since we’ve had employers contact us saying, ‘We just can’t get enough applications,’ ” says SnagAJob’s Amanda Richardson, who notes the company is doubling its own staff to 300. Even in blighted Las Vegas, several hotels have shifted into hiring mode. Ten months after the Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas folded, a new company, Dolce Hotels and Resorts, is reopening the hotel to capitalize on a nascent rebound in tourism. The hotel is on the hunt to fill 125 immediate vacancies before opening in February. “We are definitely starting to see cautious optimism in tourism and travel pick up,” says Barry Goldstein, an executive at Dolce.

America still has a long way to go to replace all eight million jobs lost during the recession, but the momentum of the recovery is picking up. “We continue to believe that U.S. employment will be stronger than most investors expect next year,” Richard Bernstein, a fund manager who had predicted the recession, wrote in a note to clients last week.

It’s a positive sign that several economists and investors who warned about the dangers of the housing bubble before the recession now believe the U.S. economy is on terra firma. In Bernstein’s case, as former chief investment strategist at Merrill Lynch last decade he alerted investors to the dangers of the housing bubble. Now, as a fund manager, he’s turned bullish on America. “The common theme today is that the U.S. stinks,” he told the Associated Press. “But the economy is already in better shape than people think.” He’s backed that up by focusing his global equity fund on American companies at a time when many in the industry are switching from U.S. stocks to emerging markets.

Likewise Barry Ritholtz, director of equity research at Fusion IQ and author of the popular financial blog The Big Picture, astutely foresaw the crisis, yet has taken an increasingly optimistic tone in recent months. As for the many doomsayers who continue to predict imminent calamity, Ritholtz calls them “zombie bears . . . They will not admit the economy is getting better, albeit slowly,” he wrote recently. “They insist the recession was a depression; they insist it never ended. These are the bears who cannot be killed. They will stay bearish, regardless of the data that all but insists otherwise.”

There’s a reason for that, says Achuthan at ECRI. “The classic emotional journey everybody takes in the wake of a big recession is, there’s a giant error of pessimism,” he says. To avoid that type of group think, ECRI focuses its analysis solely on leading indicators, which serve as tea leaves for the business cycle. And it’s why ECRI’s optimism now carries so much weight.

By looking at roughly 100 indicators that track things such as sentiment, inventories and new business orders, its various indices have proved reliable at detecting turns in the economy—it accurately predicted the 1990 recession, as well as the 2001 recession and subsequent recovery without ever crying wolf with a false recession call. ECRI didn’t predict the 2008 recession nearly as early as some others. It first warned of the potential for a downturn in December 2007 and didn’t make the official call until March—three months after the recession officially started (though still well in advance of the stock market rout in September). But importantly, in May 2009, as doom and gloom was rampant, ECRI accurately argued the recession was about to end. Similarly, earlier this year it rejected predictions of a double-dip recession, saying growth would merely slow before rebounding, which it has.

Still, skeptics of America’s recovery eagerly point to everything that could go wrong. America’s finances are a mess. The European Union is falling apart. North Korea is on a rampage and China may be slowing. But Achuthan dismisses all that: “To boil it down, those potential shocks, even if they manifest and become real, aren’t going to turn us into a recession any time soon.”

All About Real Christmas Trees - Including the Hazzards

With Christmas around the corner I thought I would glean some information from the internet.  Here is some valuable information I found on the CBC News web site.  It discusses ways of keeping your real tree fresh, avoiding fire hazzards and the most popular types of trees.


Avoiding Fire Hazzards with your Christmas Tree and Keeping it Longer:

• Make sure your real tree is fresh. It will be less likely to dry out and become a fire hazard.
• Before you buy from your local Christmas tree vendor, examine the needles. Bend them between your fingers. They shouldn't break. Tap the tree gently on a firm surface. If an excessive amount of needles fall to the ground, it's too dry. Scotch pines tend to shed more needles than other types of Christmas trees.
• Make a fresh cut on the trunk of the tree before you place it in your tree stand. The cut will help the tree absorb water. About two centimetres from the bottom should do.
• Leave the tree outside — out of the wind and sun — until it's ready to decorate.
• Water the tree often. The stand should hold at least four litres of water. Do not let the water level dip below the cut line. If you do, the cut will seal and the tree will stop absorbing water.
• Secure the tree to keep it from tipping. Many of the newer "wide base" stands offer much more stability than older stands.
• Keep tree away from floor heaters, fireplaces and other heat sources, as well as electrical outlets and electrical sources.
• Remove the tree when needles begin to fall off in large quantities. NEVER burn your tree in a fireplace. Most municipalities recycle Christmas trees, turning them into mulch.

Most Popular Types of Trees:

• Balsam fir: dark-green in appearance with long-lasting needles, and classic Christmas-tree form. It also retains its pleasing fragrance. Balsam firs need up to 10 years in the field to produce a tree of slightly taller than two metres.
• Fraser fir: similar to the balsam fir, but this species tends to keep its needles longer — up to six weeks, if cared for properly — than other Christmas trees. It can also cost almost twice as much as other trees.
• Scotch pine: tree characterized by long needles. Tends to drop more needles than other trees. Was once the Christmas tree of choice in Canada but has slipped in popularity.
• Colorado spruce: deep blue foliage makes it popular with some. Longer needles compared to other spruces. Handles heavy ornaments well.
• White spruce: short needles with medium blue-green colour and prickly texture.
• White pine: popular among some because of its very soft needles. However, those soft needles mean the tree can only handle light ornaments.

A ‘Snapshot’ view of the Canadian Real Estate Scene

Want to know what’s happening on the Canadian real estate scene these days? Thanks for asking....here is the answer.

The resale market consistently surged forward throughout the first half of 2010 in virtually every major market across the country with the exception of Windsor, which is still feeling the impacted of the recent auto industry woes. 

In recent months, the record-breaking level of sales activity has begun to slow and level off.  However, it should be noted that a modest decline in sales activity is being weighed against record-breaking performances in the previous year.  The previous red-hot sellers market seen for the past few years is now moving into more balanced territory, as predicted in industry forecasts.  While the number of transactions is beginning to slow, housing prices have stayed stable, or even increased.   

House prices have reached record or near-record levels in every province.  National listings inventory is tight, fueling the market, and adding further upward pressure on prices.  However, inventory is expected to gradually grow as sales slow, despite the fact that relatively new listings are currently coming up for sale. 

Looking ahead, industry forecasts for 2011 are generally positive, calling for a leveling off of sales activity.  The days of double-digit price increases appear to be coming to an end for the near future, but moderate price increases are expected in many Canadian markets to the end of next year.

Of course, these are just national trends.  Sales activity and pricing can vary dramatically in different communities, neighbourhoods, and even on the same street. 

Feel free to contact me if you want City, Neighbourhood or even Street information.

Choosing a REALTOR to Sell Your Home

Five Questions Sellers Should Ask When Choosing a Real Estate Representative

Selecting a real estate representative to assist in the largest financial transaction a person will likely ever make is a critical part of the home selling process. In a challenging economic environment where competition among real estate companies is on the rise, choosing the agent that’s right for you can be a confusing task.

Coldwell Banker® suggests home sellers start by interviewing several real estate agents to find someone with whom they “connect.”  However, chemistry is not the only variable to consider. The length of time an agent has been in the business, his or her home sale success rate and knowledge of the local market can also play a significant role in the decision-making process.

To jump-start the conversation, Coldwell Banker suggests five essential questions home sellers should ask before selecting a real estate representative.  

1.      How long have you been in the real estate business and what has your success rate been in terms of home sales over the past 12 months? The length of time a real estate representative has been in the business and their home sale success rate demonstrates their knowledge and expertise in the industry. Ideally, a home seller will want to work with an agent who has a high percentage of completed transactions within your home’s price range.

2.      What was the average amount of time it took to sell those listings? Comparing marketing times between the agents you are interviewing will provide you with an indication of how well that agent markets homes.

3.      What was your list-price to sale-price ratio? Significant differences between original listing prices and ultimate sale prices can be an indication that the list prices quoted at the outset were unrealistic.

4.     What is your online marketing plan to sell my property? In Canada, the vast majority of home buyers begin their home search on the Internet. Therefore, the real estate representative you select should have a strong online marketing presence as well as be visible through social media outlets in order to reach the widest possible audience. Websites such as Coldwell Banker On Location, a branded YouTube™ channel, allow real estate agents to showcase their listings and local knowledge by tapping into the power of video and offering consumers a new way to search for homes online.

5.      Do you have references you can share from past clients? References allow you to gain additional insight into the day-to-day workings with the real estate agent. Gathering reputable references will help ensure that you select the best real estate representative for your needs.