A bedroom, as most of us would imagine, is a place where one would ordinarily sleep, will have a door which can be shut so one can sleep in peace and quiet, will have a window for a daylight, and be large enough to have a bed. Ontario Building Code describes this in great detail, below are few excerpts: 9.5.7.1. Areas of Bedrooms (1) Except as provided in Articles 9.5.7.2. and 9.5.7.3., bedrooms in dwelling units shall have an area not less than 7 m² where built-in cabinets are not... [read more]

  Finding a rental property in today’s market of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) can be challenging. The rental market is very HOT! Vacancy rates are at all time low (around 1%) meaning that landlords (property owners) have their pick of who they want to rent to (and for what price). The housing market affects the rental rates. The more landlords pay for the property, the higher their mortgage, the higher the rent. And as it becomes harder to buy a home, with low market... [read more]

Very often we are faced with a situation where a person moves temporarily from one city to another, a property becomes a rental unit or a rental unit becomes principal residence. The question is: does a person have to occupy the property all the time for it to be deemed principal residence, and be it exempt from capital gain tax for the period the owner does not ordinarily occupy it? There are certain elections one can make in order to defer the capital gain taxes when there is a change... [read more]

  GTA’s real estate market has been very expensive for many decades and it is often very difficult to get into the market, and as we wait to save more the price increases tend to outpace the savings. In the last 20 years the price corrections have been few and far between, with few hiccups along the way the prices are going from expensive to even more expensive. One way to get into the market is to find a place with a rental basement potential, yours truly have done it with our... [read more]

Many people during their lifetime move from one property to another and if you are an owner quite often buying and selling around the same time is a necessity. The questions arise about what to do first, buy or sell as well as what everyone should know when planning on buying and selling at the same time. There are many factors that will influence this decision. Market condition. Typically, in real estate the markets are classified as sellers, balanced and buyers market. Sellers... [read more]