Do you have aluminum wiring in your home? This is an issue that comes up from time to time in home inspections and, it can be a concern for home buyers. Some home insurers will not insure a house with this type of wiring claiming it is a fire hazard. It is estimated that there [...]
The costs to maintain our home never go down, do they? Gas, electricity, cable, telephone service, water, sewers, taxes… they do take an ever-growing chunk out of our wallets each month! When buying a home, it’s a good idea to consider the operational costs of running the house you are considering and, looking at what [...]
Many of our rural properties in South Georgian Bay get their water supply from wells, be they dug, drilled, bored or sand point wells. Whenever I list such a home for sale, I always take a water sample at the outset. Quite probably, any offer that comes in will include a buyers requirement for one or [...]
Back about two months ago, I wrote about the fact that we’d hired Garden Holistics to tackle our lawn of weeds without the use of chemicals. At the time, Jerome said it would take about two years to recover. Could he have meant two months? Since that first post, the lawn has been aerated, top dressed, [...]
Like most homeowners in our neighbourhood, John and I take pride in our landscaping. When we purchased our home 4 years ago, there was nothing but a gravel circular driveway right across the front yard. The grass was green but chemically dependant. We replaced the driveway with one made of stamped concrete and we lined [...]
With the Spring Market now here, it’s timely to talk about getting your home ready to sell. Did you know that most buyers make a real decision about a house purchase in the first eleven to fifteen seconds of seeing a property? By then they will already have developed a perception of your property that [...]
Recently, I was reading a review of paint brands that was written by a professional designer. She was recommending a paint line called c2 and said, ‘It has more pigment than other paints, the colour saturation and luminosity are incomparable in my view, and you will love the sophisticated palette. It is also hypoallergenic and [...]
The snow and cold have arrived here in South Georgian Bay and along with them, chances are we’ll see a few incidents of frozen pipes over the next few months. There are several steps you should take to prepare your secondary home for the season that can help cut costs and can protect you from [...]
Someone I know was fined $5,000 last year for failing to ensure that there were working smoke detectors in a rental unit that he owned. At the time the tenants first occupied his unit, the smoke detectors were working and he never knew otherwise. Later, during a random door to door check by the local [...]
While reading an article this morning about speed-cleaning your house, it brought back a hilarious memory of the time my assistant Chris and I had to do just that for one of our client’s homes. Our seller clients were busy professionals not quite known for their superior housekeeping skills. As a precaution, we’d run over [...]
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