Edmonton Real Estate Blog

“Death, taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them.” -Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

True enough, majority of the people all over the world dread paying taxes, but we can’t do anything about it since it helps our society move forward. With that in mind, let us take a look at the taxes related to Edmonton’s real estate without messing with the figures.

Property taxes in Edmonton are pro-rated so the buyer and the seller only pays a specific amount of tax based from their ownership of the house. Home buyers’ tax liability period starts from the move-in date.

Edmonton.ca provides a comprehensive report on the basics of Property Assessment, Tax Facts, Property Verification and Tax Assistant, which is quite a helpful resource. Just to skim through Property Assessment, it is important to remember that city mails out property assessment notices in early January to all homeowners within the City of Edmonton. This process gives you the opportunity to (1) review your property’s assessed value, (2) obtain more information if you have questions or concerns about your updated market value assessment and (3) plan ahead for your property tax payment.

According to the site, in order to ensure that all homeowners have a fair and correct property assessment, the city employs a dedicated team of assessors. Read more about property assessment here.

The Edmonton Journal on the other hand recently published the 2014 property tax assessment changes with a fully interactive map showing the major changes by neighborhood.

It’s a manic Monday once again in Edmonton and I just had a fill of my cappuccino so let’s start our week right and bright with some home improvement ideas!

There’s a saying that the fastest way to a mans heart is through his stomach (I approve!) so its best to focus our attention to the kitchen. Ladies, moms and girlfriends we did the leg work for you and compiled the list of great kitchen inspirations available in the world wide web. Prepare to stimulate your visual senses with the compilation below–and don’t forget to let us know what you think in the comment section!

1. Small Space Kitchen Design Suggestions: It’s all about maximizing space. In this piece, HGTV provides superb tips and tricks to put into great use all the nooks and cranny of your kitchen. Read more here.

2. SieMatic’s Sliding Drawer System: Kitchens.com showcases SieMatics new product line for the beloved Kitchen drawer. Mr. and Mrs. Smith would love this one. According to the article, “Thanks to the outstanding versatility of the SieMatic system, drawers can be subdivided and accessorized more individually than ever before.” Read more here.

3. 19 Amazing Kitchen Decorating Ideas: realsimple.com shows us how to decorate the kitchen like a pro! Be your own interior designer with this one. Read more here.

4. 30 Great Kitchen Design Ideas: housebeautiful.com pieced together an artistic slideshow for those serious in taking the kitchen to a whole new level. Cali kitchen, French Fantasy Kitchen and a whole lot more funky sounding kitchen design awaits you! Click here to view it.

5. Kitchen Design Ideas: Saved the best for last! One of my favorite places to look for inspiration is Pinterest. It’s a universe of fantastic images. Here is a board of kitchen ideas that would surely be a visual overload! Browse until your heart is satisfied. View it here.

Kitchen is one of the most important places inside the house. Improving your kitchen could and would surely add to the overall value of the home literally and figuratively so don’t stop with just your plain vanilla designed kitchen. There’s thousands of possibilities on how to make your kitchen stand out and we hope the sources have above would serve as an inspiration for you.

Subscribe to our blog and get your daily fill of home improvement ideas.

Buying a home is probably one of the best things you would ever do in your lifetime. It’s fun but also a bit scary at the same time as there is more to it than just browsing the internet and viewing a couple of open houses over the weekend. Believe us, we know. We’ve been there. Speaking from experience, my fiancé and I just recently bought our condo. There’s a ton of things to consider when buying a home for the first time and here at Team Leading Edge, we always like to help people in need-people like you. We broke down to bite-sized pieces all the essential things that you need to consider. Read, absorb and digest the information as it may help guide you in taking the right path to home ownership.

1. HOME SIZE VS LOCATION: We couldn’t stress more the importance of being decisive on day 1. Before you start searching the internet for that dream home, determine first what’s more important to you, size or location?

   More often than not, you will be torn between choosing a house that has a higher selling price but is located near your favorite establishments and a house that has a lower selling price with bigger living space BUT is a bit farther out of your favorite hangout place.

   Making this choice early on in the buying process will provide you with peace of mind and help you avert “buyer’s remorse” once everything is done.

   

2. MORTGAGE QUALIFICATION: Knowing the amount of mortgage you are qualified for should be your next top priority. You may believe you are qualified to borrow $400k but the lender might determine that you’re only good for $300k. Recognizing your mortgage qualification would basically narrow down your choices of homes.

   Check out our article on how you could boost your mortgage chances.

   

3. DURATION OF HOME LOAN: Quite a number of first time homebuyers prefer 30-year home loans while others chose to stick with 15-year mortgages. 30-year home loans usually have higher interest rates than 15-year loans. The main reason behind the high interest rate is because it will take longer for the lender to recoup the money loaned to you. Since Alberta is one of the best performing regions in the country, you may see very competitive interest rates out in the market. Review each one out to find the best interest rate for you.

   

4. SPEAKING OF RATES-KNOW HOW RATE THE INVENTORY: Once you reach this stage in the process, you can be sure that you’re on the right track!

   Being prudent in the selection process would help you avoid an expensive mistake. Here’s how you could rate the inventory of the houses that you visit so you could make an informed decision at the end of the day.

• Begin with taking photos of the house numbers and facade so you could easily identify individual houses.
• Take a piece of paper with you or use your mobile device to write down notes about significant features of the house such as the floor plan, room design and colors.
• Remember to check out the neighbor’s house. Would there be any possibility that it would cause problem in the future? Is it blocking any view?
• Also take note of the neighborhood, is it conveniently located to any near establishments that might be crucial to you?
• Shortly after leaving the house, rate it between the scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best.

  

5. STOP BEING FINICKY! Okay, I just had to put it in here. I’ve had quite a number of clients that had been too picky and ended up with not so good deals. Since most first time homebuyers have limited resources, it is best to be open for compromise. You may have to make some home repairs or put up with ugly decorations. The idea here is if it’s just some minor inconveniences that you could easily fix, take it.

   Ask yourself, how important is it for you to have your own home now? Or would you still continue to rent for x number of years? Stop being finicky.

Equipped with this essential knowledge, we are confident that you could and would make the right decisions. To get you started in finding your future home, Team Leading Edge provides high speed access to the finest MLS real estate listings in Edmonton. It is there that you could browse through all the available houses and condos for sale in real-time.

You may also call the team at 780-634-8151 anytime you would like to schedule a viewing of your next home.

It’s the million dollar question, how would you really know the monetary value of your home? With the advent of the internet, it’s now easier than it was 20 years ago. Although, accuracy could be an issue since data changes all the time, knowing an estimated value of your precious home is better than knowing absolutely nothing at all.

Here are 5 easy ways to get you started if you’re thinking of selling your home in the near future.

1. TIMING: The time of year you’re thinking of selling your home plays a considerable role in its overall success. Winter season would typically pose a certain difficulty in the selling process since majority of the buyers don’t want to move things in negative degree weather.

Nonetheless, there’s always a market in whatever season, the only difference is the time it would take to sell it. Since there would be fewer buyers in the cold season, this may drag the price down as those people who would really like to sell will lower down their selling price to attract buyers. Also, homes that are for sale in the summer time might sell faster than those being sold in winter.



2. COMPARATIVE MARKET ANALYSIS: One technique that is being done by appraisers and Realtors all over the world to know the value of a property is called Comparative Market Analysis or CMA. Though this should really be done by professionals, there is no law that would stop you if you want to do this yourself.To put it in simple terms, CMA is the process of extracting an estimate value of a subject home based on the prices of properties sold in the same neighborhood, area or location in past few months, given the value of the sold properties have similarities to the subject home; same square footage, number of bedrooms.This isn’t a perfect science but it would be a good guide to know what the price range of your home is.

   Google search homes sold in your neighborhood the past month and see what prices come out. Ask your neighbors if they know anybody around your area that have sold a house and for how much. If everything goes as planned, you can compare and contrast the data you have gathered against your property and analyze the result which can basically give you a rough estimate on the price range.

   Do note that appraisers and Realtors have the tools and trainings to perform this process properly. It could be a hit or miss on your side of the business.

   

3. FREE ONLINE CALCULATORS: Take advantage of the technology that’s available. Like the CMA, online calculators might not give you the most accurate value but it would surely help validate the price range that you got out of the previous step that you have done.Keep in mind to be certain that the information you included in the info fields of the calculator are proper like the address, sq ft, etc. There is a probability that results from the calculator may vary widely, if and when this happen, you may just want to get the average of the results.
   

   Click here

4. MULTIPLE LISTING SERVICE (MLS): Realtors or real estate professionals all over the world use the MLS to store real estate data. From Edmonton, Canada to Manila, Philippines, MLS is being used. Although the systems being employed to run the process are very different, using MLS is the internationally known way to provide real estate information to clients.The public have limited access to the information inside the MLS but you may still use this as a tool to perform the first two steps. You may be able to check the number of people selling similar homes like yours on a particular neighborhood at a specific time and at what prices their homes are selling for.Realtors on the other hand have 100% access to all the pertinent information inside the MLS that they are a member with and could extract this information to establish an appropriate price for a distinct property.

   

5. USE PROFESSIONALS: That is what Team Leading Edge is for; licensed, competent Realtors that make it a living to help people like you determine the most competitive value for your home.An experienced Realtor will do the leg work in consolidating all the data needed to accurately put a price on your property. He or she will combine online, offline and internal information found in the Realtor network to help you sell the property in the best possible price, at the shortest amount of time.

After you have done all your homework, the next best thing to do is to work with the people who do this the best. Recently awarded as one of the Top 30 RE/MAX Real Estate Teams in Western Canada, Team Leading Edge has all the systems in place to help you succeed in this endeavor.  Call Team Leading Edge now at (780) 634-8151 to get you started.

You can download our FREE HOME EVALUATION here.

After a hardcore Monday work, time for you to catch some breath and recoup before blazing again through the rest of the week. If you have already subscribed to our blog (great for you!), you might have already noticed that we here at Team Leading Edge always mix up our articles and this time we wanted to feature something funny. I figured nothing is funnier than seeing a home that have failed in some engineering or architectural way-or basically a photo that sums up loss of common sense. I don’t want to be mean but being in the real estate industry myself, I have seen a fair share of failed home designs and it always cracks me up. Too bad I wasn’t able to take photos of the failed home designs that I saw when I was doing site visits!

Now lucky for you I have done the leg work and filtered the worst, funny and crazy home designs around. Check out the list below to see Failed Home Designs.

Remember to view our list of amazing homes for sale in Edmonton through our MLS real estate listing after. You would not be disappointed.

1. WRONG ERECTION. I don’t know if the owners are one of those “fertility” believers but, really, this is just wrong.But, Austin Powers like it.
   

   Time to get your mojo

2. SUICIDE DOOR. They took it literally. Judging from this photo, I can safely assume that if the 3^rd floor is for rent, they would have extremely low tenancy rate due to this fatal flaws in the floor design.  
3. LEANING COUSIN OF PISA. Get it? No? Shame on you.
4. DRA-WHERE? A big facepalm right here. Complete waste of storage space.
5. BACKDOOR. In some weird way, this isn’t really that much of a failure. Looking at the positive side, if you ever really really needed to use the toilet when you arrive home, you wouldn’t need to go inside the house, you can dash straight at the backdoor!
6. [             ]. I will just leave this one for you to think of a caption.
7. WRONG SIDE. Seriously. You had one job!
8. ECO-FRIENDLY GARAGE. They didn’t want to cut down the tree for environmental purposes. Should’ve moved the garage though. See amazing garage designs here. 

   

9. MAKE ROOM FOR THE FRIDGE. Yup! Squeeze it right there. Perfect!
   

   I know how Patrick feels

10. SOME MEN WOULD RELATE.
11. OKAY, THESE TWO DESERVE THE LAST SPOT.
    Plumber was just making sure that if there would be a leak, he already had it covered.Bro, just no.
    
    Here’s hoping you won’t do the same mistakes seen here or your work may just end up in our future list! That’s about it, don’t forget to subscribe.

    See beautiful homes with great working designs for sale in Edmonton here.

I love cars, Lexus LFA type of cars to be exact. The only game on my iPhone is Asphalt 8, a kickass car racing game. Cars today aren’t just simple mechanical tools used to travel from point A to point B, no, they have evolved to become an extension of one’s self. The brand, color and interior all provides subtle clues into who or what the owner is. As for me, I’m always in awe with the aesthetics of it, the status-symbol and the toys-for-the-big-boys bragging rights that it brings to the table.

This is love.

With that in mind, I wanted to know what the best garage designs look like and what I found brought tears into my eye-yes, I stared so long on the computer screen that my eyes got watery-probably you would too. Be warned, some of the images might be disturbing, as one user pointed out “some of these cars spend the night in a better room than I do!”. Couldn’t agree more [Insert sobbing emoticon here].

Okay, enough with the introduction and let’s get down to business. Below is a gallery I made of what I believe is the most epic, amazing, outrageously expensive and very creative garage designs. Also, don’t forget to check out our list of amazing Edmonton houses for sale (with garages, of course) in our supreme Edmonton MLS real estate listing. Enjoy!

Here’s the mother lode of amazing garages I hand picked from luxury4play.com:

Elegant garage from Houzz.com:

Condo living to the max! This sky garage is the future:

I don’t know about you but it may take sometime for me to afford one of these garage designs but hey, if there’s a will (or wheel for that matter) there’s a way, right?! Share with us your own garage design in the comment section below.