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29/05/202429/05/2024

Why a couple saving for a home in Chicago bought one in Italy instead

Kristina Knighten and her husband, Paul Cordier, were living in the United Arab Emirates and working as TEFL-certified teachers when they decided they were serious about buying their first home in America.

Knighten, 38, was raised in the Chicago suburbs, and Cordier, 45, was raised in London but loved the idea of living in the Windy City after having visited with Knighten over the course of their relationship and two-year marriage.

“We knew we didn’t necessarily want to move back straight away but more as a long-term investment and we could maybe retire there,” Knighten tells CNBC Make It.

The couple lived in the UAE and had just under $40,000 saved.

Knighten and Cordier worked with a real estate agent in the U.S. to scout properties they saw online and started looking for mortgage lenders, too.

Their budget was between $260,000 and $270,000 for a multi-family home in the North

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26/05/202426/05/2024

Cottage owners share the pros and cons of ownership and the Home of the Week: Canadian real estate news for May 25

Home of the Week, 145059 16th Side Road, Meaford, Ont.elevatedphotos.ca

Here are The Globe and Mail’s top housing and real estate stories this week and one home worth a look.

Try The Globe’s business and investing news quiz

Owning a cottage isn’t what it used to be: Canadians share the financial pros and cons of ownership

The state of Canadian cottage ownership is changing. For people already financially stretched on their primary properties, buying or maintaining a cottage is further out of reach than ever before, write Irene Galea and Salmaan Farooqui. That pressure has led many to see their cottages in a new light: a potential source of revenue, a liability or even a full-time home. Today, cottagers and the communities they inhabit are still reeling from the aftermath of years of change, from the pandemic to increasing housing prices. But there have

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22/04/202422/04/2024

Home buyers’ alert: Terms you may not know, but should

Foch says that, for real estate investors in Canada, it’s much better to look beyond the nice round number of a house price and look at what your return on investment can look like from an income perspective. “You can think about a property in terms of price, but you can also think about it in terms of price to income and that’s what a cap rate or a gross rent multiplier would do,” he says. (An investment property’s cap, or capitalization, rate is the net operating income it produces divided by the property’s value.) This way, you can use a more representative inclusive metric when you are trying to select a property to purchase.

How does an assignment sale work?

An “assignment sale” is when an initial buyer signs a contract that allows the first buyer to sell the property prior to the closing date. This is uncommon in

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21/04/2024

Botched home sale costs Winnipeg man his right to sell real estate in Manitoba

A Winnipeg man’s registration as a real estate salesman has been cancelled after a family vacated their home on a tight deadline for a sale that never went through, then changed brokerages and, months later, got $60,000 less for their house than what they expected when they moved out.

A Manitoba Securities Commission panel found Reginald Wayne Kehler engaged in professional misconduct and conduct unbecoming a registrant when he signed a document on behalf of sellers without their knowledge, reduced the listing price of a home without their approval, and didn’t tell them for nearly a month that a potential buyer hadn’t paid a promised $100,000 deposit.

The sellers, identified as D.R. and P.R. in the panel decision released Wednesday, were awarded $10,394 from the real estate reimbursement fund. Kehler was ordered to pay $12,075 to cover costs of the investigation and hearing.

The sellers were a military family

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14/04/2024

Ottawa eases mortgage rules for first time in a decade and the Home of the Week: Canadian real estate news for April 13

Home of the Week, 7 Hurndale Ave., Playter Estates, TorontoMshati Productions

Here are The Globe and Mail’s top housing and real estate stories this week and one home worth a look.

Try The Globe’s business and investing news quiz

First-time homebuyers can get 30-year mortgages to buy newly built houses under rule change

As part of a growing collection of initiatives designed to address Canada’s growing housing crisis, the federal government announced that it was easing its mortgage rules for the first time in a decade, writes Rachelle Younglai. First-time homebuyers who require mortgage insurance — due to making a down payment that is less than 20 per cent of the purchase price — will now be able to take out 30-year mortgages on a newly built home. It is unclear how much the longer amortization period will help first-time buyers, as it only

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