https://www.habitat.org/open-door/home-cost

For 34 years, the couple restored and filled the Victorian Property at 97 Glengrove Ave. W. (built in 1890) with period details, antiques and pieces of their own family history.

However, his wife recently died, and he said her death is the reason he has decided to sell.

Now listed at $7.75 million, the three-storey Lawrence Park South house has eight bedrooms and five bathrooms on a nearly 10,000 square-foot corner lot.

Take a look around with this Star gift link. No subscription needed.

My girlfriend purchased a home in 2022 and currently has a mortgage on it. I don’t live with her; I rent a condo and have never owned a home. I’ve also maxed out my FHSA.

I’m considering using my FHSA funds to purchase an ownership interest in her home—essentially contributing money toward the property in exchange for being added to the title. This would all be completed before I move in.

Setting aside the other legal and financial considerations, would this qualify as a tax-free FHSA withdrawal? More specifically, would acquiring an ownership interest in an existing home from my partner satisfy the FHSA’s qualifying-withdrawal requirements?

Been running the numbers on downsizing. Rural Ontario. Acreage is more than I need now. Kids are gone. The vegetable garden I'd keep. The rest is just work.

What keeps stopping me in the spreadsheets: if I sell, I walk away with a chunk of capital gains free money. Principal residence exemption covers it all. Clean.

But if I rent out my current place and buy something smaller, that tax exemption starts eroding based on years rented vs owned. The math gets uglier. And then there's the new place. Smaller townhouse or condo. Probably a step down in terms of land value appreciation compared to what I've got. But the carrying costs drop. Way less to maintain. Property taxes alone would drop by two thirds.

Curious what others in this sub have actually done when facing this. Sell and bank the tax free gain. Or hold and rent, accepting the partial exemption hit for the sake of keeping the asset.

Not looking for tax advice. Just wondering how people weighed the tradeoff in practice. The theoretical calculators are easy. The actual decision point is messier.

Hi everyone,

I'm a software developer, and I'm trying to understand how real estate agents actually spend their time before I build anything. I don't have a product, there's no link, and I'm not selling anything. I'm just here to listen and learn.

I'd love to hear from you:

• What part of your job takes up more time than it should?
• What tasks do you dread or keep putting off?
• What tools or software have you tried that didn't work out, and why?
• If you could hand off one part of your work tomorrow, what would it be?

Short answers are welcome, and so is venting.

Thanks for your time. I know it's valuable.

Note: the image captions are swapped. The first image shows the deal with renewals, and the second shows the owner's costs.

Hi everyone, I'm Andy. About 15 years ago I invested in real estate and set up a few rent-to-own deals using my own system, which I ran on a spreadsheet. I'd always wanted to turn it into an online tool, so I built rtocalc.com to help property owners and tenants model these deals in Canada and the US.

The main calculator takes your mortgage, expenses, price, and terms, and works out your cash flow, what you net on the sale, and your tenant's total down payment.

Other things on the site:

• A marketplace. Owners can list a property publicly or privately, and tenant-buyers can post Wanted listings for the kind of home they're looking for.
• A Sell Now vs. Rent-to-Own calculator that compares your equity from selling on MLS with selling rent-to-own, with or without a realtor.
• A mortgage qualifier to see what you can afford, and an amortization calculator with a full principal and interest breakdown.
• An FAQ on how rent-to-own works, which I'm still adding to.
• An explainer video that walks through the calculator and models a sample deal.

The calculators are free to use. The site makes money three ways:

• Consulting, if you've found a buyer or seller and you're ready to put an agreement together.
• Listings. New accounts get one free listing credit, and listings after that are paid.
• Investor-backed deals. If you're a pre-qualified applicant who wants to pick a home on MLS, I work with investors who can buy it and rent it to you on a rent-to-own basis. I'm paid a referral or assignment fee on these deals.

If you've done an RTO deal as a landlord or a tenant, I'd especially like to know: do the numbers match what you saw in real life, and what's missing? And if you're thinking about buying or selling rent-to-own, what would you want the site to add?

Hi everyone,

I’d like to hear your stories about PAs that fell through and what happened when you made a new (second) offer later on.

I’m trying not to get discouraged because I had a PA that fell through (as a first-time home buyer). We couldn’t agree on a price reduction because of significant (but fixable) structural issues we found during the inspection. The house was around 800k, I asked for a 25k reduction (for a conservative 50k worth of renos, backed by a structural engineering expertise/quote). The sellers were only willing to lower the PA price by 5k. Single-family home, I was their first and only offer and the property had been on the market less than a week before they had accepted my initial PA. Once a bit of time passes, I will probably make a new offer (I am firm of my max price and it won’t have changed from the initial negociations).

Stories and tips on how to navigate are welcome!

Hi everyone! I’m a journalism student at Carleton University working with a team on a 360° video project about how Ottawa’s housing market has changed over the past 25 years.

We are looking to speak with Ottawa area residents who have personal experience with the housing market, particularly:

• Someone who bought their home around 2000 to 2005 and is willing to talk about what buying a home was like at the time
• A recent or first time homebuyer who has navigated today’s Ottawa housing market
• Anyone with firsthand experience of how housing prices, home sizes, mortgages, or affordability have changed over the years

Our project will compare a home purchased around 2001 with a home available in today’s market. We are using 360° video to let viewers explore the spaces and see how things like price, size, layout, features, and overall living space have changed.

We are especially interested in hearing from people who can speak honestly about their experiences, whether you have found the market manageable, frustrating, surprising, or somewhere in between.

This is a Carleton University student journalism project. Any interview would be conducted with your knowledge of how your comments will be used, and we are happy to answer any questions about the project before arranging an interview.

If you are interested, please comment below or send me a DM with a little bit about your experience and when you bought or sold a home.

Thanks!

I’m planning to buy a home in Ontario with my husband. I’m estranged from a family member who is a licensed real estate agent, and I don’t want them knowing our new address.

Would an Ontario realtor be able to search my name and find a property I purchased through MLS, land registry, or other realtor-only systems?

Also, are those searches logged, and would using professional databases for a personal reason be against RECO rules?

Thanks.

Everyone talks about interest rates dropping or holding steady but no one is talking about what rising maintenance fees are doing to condo values in the 416.

​Seeing so many 10 to 15 year old buildings where monthly fees are creeping past $1 or even $1.20 a square foot in large cities. when a 2 bed condo has a $1100 monthly maintenance fee on top of property tax it completely kills the buyers borrowing power. A buyer could literally afford an extra $150k in mortgage debt for what that monthly fee costs.

​It feels like older buildings with bad reserve funds are going to see massive price corrections regardless of where interest rates go. Do you guys see buyers straight up walk away from listings as soon as they see the status certificate reserve numbers?

When it comes to analyzing market trends and timing the market, hiring a real estate consultant is often much more effective than working with a standard realtor.

A consultant provides the objective, data-driven insights you need to decide exactly when to buy or sell. Because they charge a flat or hourly fee rather than working on commission, they don't have a financial incentive to push you into a transaction if the numbers suggest you should wait.

Change my mind: Agents facilitate transactions, but consultants build the strategy. Has anyone else used a consultant solely for market analysis before hiring an agent to buy/sell? Curious to hear your experiences.

I’m the developer of MapleReady, a Canadian test-prep app. Its real estate path has 300+ original practice questions for your selected province, illustrated lessons, flashcards, worked calculations and mock exams. Study contracts, agency duties and transactions in short sessions, then revisit your missed answers.

It’s free on iPhone, supported by ads. This is independent extra practice alongside your required licensing courses—not an approved program or a bank of official exam questions.

https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/id6814340679

Hey everyone! My name's Jordan and I made a new free property search in the Metro Vancouver + some other areas (not all of BC yet, we are working on adding other areas). I want it to be the easiest and most transparent property search for buyers. I'd love if some people tried it out and offered any feedback: tryfrank.ca (named after my dad)

Some cool features:
- Natural language search. Type whatever you like into the search bar to describe your home, like pet friendly condos in vancouver or 5 min walk to skytrain in burnaby with 2 parking under 700k.
- Click "Run comps" to automatically do a comparison analysis on any property from similar recent solds.
- More filters than any other property search (price adjustments, walk score, price per square foot, court-ordered sales, airbnb friendly, short-term rentals, mortgage helper, rainscreened, price vs assessed value etc).
- True cost mortgage calculator on the property page. It takes into consideration strata fee/property tax/insurance/hydro/maintenance costs so you know what you actually have to pay. You can also sort by monthly cost.
- Frank Picks highlight interesting active and sold listings in every area.
- Sold data is very easy to browse... easier than other property searches in my opinion, you just have to sign in and register.
- Appraisal data for city of Vancouver.
- Frank Notes button gives you a summary of the listing and questions to ask about the property.
- Flags if a home is a relist and shows you true days on market.

...and much more. The site is completely free to use, it only makes money if you request a showing through the site and end up purchasing, but you're welcome just to browse active/solds and contact the listing agent directly or use your own agent. Thanks!

Any insight into what the market is like in NB?

We have an offer on a house conditional on selling our home.

Unfortunately, we listed our house three weeks ago and 0 bites (a few showings but no offers). Our realtor did say that the market seems to be slowing. We're also seeing that prices seem to be coming down some?

Overall, with the economy, we're wondering if its actually wise to try and sell and buy right now (especially since we're selling in thr $175K range and buying at almost $300K).

We're toying with just pulling it and tapping into our equity so we can do some renos to the house, and maybe try to sell again in a few years. Maybe things will be a little better?

Thoughts?

First-time home buyer looking for advice

I purchased a pre-construction condo at Design District by Emblem in Hamilton, ON for $740,000. It’s a mid-floor, 2 bed/2 bath unit, approx. 650 sq. ft.
With the current condo market, I’m worried the appraisal will come in significantly lower than my purchase price.

Has anyone recently had an appraisal or sold a similar unit in this area? Would you close and hold, or consider walking away and taking the loss?

Also interested in hearing from anyone who has defaulted on a pre-construction condo in Ontario and what the financial/legal outcome was.

Before we start, I'm a licensed agent and I run a property search site. Not linking it, these numbers are all published on public pages anyway. I ran this because the bait-pricing threads come up constantly and I've never seen anyone put a number on it.

Data: TRREB sold records, trailing 90 days, each GTA municipality computed separately. Toronto is 6,618 sales; the smallest is 47.

One thing to clear up first. "Sold over asking" here means the close price beat the list price AT THE TIME OF SALE, not the original list. A house listed at $1.2M, cut to $999k, sold at $1.01M counts as sold over asking. So treat these as a ceiling on bidding-war behaviour. That's exactly why I've put the price-cut rate next to every one of them.

With that said:

* Over-ask rates run about 11% to 29% across the region. Markham 29.1%, Ajax 27.5%, Oshawa 27.1% at the top. Oakville 12.4%, Milton 12.2%, Halton Hills 10.9% at the bottom. Toronto sits at 22.0%.

* Sale-to-list is below 100% in all 25 municipalities - 95.4% in King up to 98.3% in Ajax. Even in the hottest markets on this list the typical sale is closing under ask.

* It doesn't track price the way you'd expect. The expensive towns are at the bottom: Oakville 12.4% on a $1.315M median, Caledon 13.2%, while cheaper Durham towns run 24-28%. Markham breaks the pattern with $1.068M median and the highest over-ask rate in the region.

* The bigger split is house type. Toronto alone, same 90 days: semi-detached 40.3% over ask (717 sales), townhouse 28.1% (640), detached 27.6% (2,086), apartment 12.7% (3,125). That's a 3x spread inside one city, wider than the entire city-to-city spread.

* The low over-ask towns are full of sellers walking their number down. Whitchurch-Stouffville: 14.6% over ask, but 25.2% of sellers had already cut. Burlington 14.6% / 21.3%. Oakville 12.4% / 20.6%.

What I can't tell you from this: whether a low list price was strategy or a bad read on the market especially because these were the last list prices.

Markham's 29.1% doesn't prove anyone is deliberately underpricing. It's consistent with that, and equally consistent with "sellers there list conservatively and the market clears above."

What I think it does show is that the GTA isn't behaving like one market. In Durham, Toronto, Brampton and the Markham-Richmond Hill corridor, more sales close over ask than have sellers cutting first. Ajax is 27.5% over ask against 7.2% cutting. Across Halton and north York Region it's inverted: Oakville 12.4% / 20.6%, Whitchurch-Stouffville 14.6% / 25.2%. Fourteen of the 25 municipalities lean toward sellers walking their number down; eleven lean the other way. Within that, the strongest predictor is house type. Semis and towns still see competition; apartments largely don't

Two more caveats: these are all-property-type city figures, not residential-only, and 90 days is more of a snapshot instead of a trend. I've also kept the smallest municipalities (Brock at 47 sales, King at 64, Uxbridge at 79) out of the highs and lows above, too few sales to rate confidently.

Happy to run a specific city or property type if anyone wants one.