Blog.ByTheOwner.com

If you are buying and selling a home, you will want to understand the type of electricity in your home. It is 100amp? 200amp? What’s the difference?

Electricity

Knowing if the home you are buying has adequate electricity to meet your needs is very important. Your home inspector should explain the electricity set-up in the home you are planning on buying. However, before the home inspector arrives, here is some information that might help you.

How Many Amps
Most homes now are 200 amps. However, some older homes might still have 100 amps service. If you want to check the size of your service equipment, this is very easy. Open the door on the electrical panel and look for the main breaker, usually at the top of the panel. There should be a number on the handle indicating the rated amps. It should say 100 or 200.

200 amp service is sufficient for most of the appliances in your home. However, 100 amp service might not have enough power to be able to handle all your appliances.. If all your appliances were on, (HDTV, computer, toaster, microwave, stove) you would most likely overload your electrical system.

For a buyer, the important lesson is to first check if there is 100amp or 200amp. If it’s 100, then you know that you will most likely need to upgrade. Your home inspector will verify for you.

Knob and Tube Wiring

Some old homes might have Knob and Tube wiring. While this might scare away buyers, it shouldn’t. The problem with knob and tube is that home insurance companies will not insure a home with that kind of wiring. However, you can still buy the home and agree to replace the wiring within 30-60 days. It could cost between $10,000-$20,000 depending on the size of the home.

It would be a shame to pass up a great home, that you might be able to get for $30,000 less that a similar home just because it has knob and tube. Why not buy the home for $30,000 less and then spend $15,000 fixing the wiring. If you do that, you will know that all your wiring is new!

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I recently came across and article entitled “6 tips to better real estate photos“, ByTheOwner.com knows the importance of excellent photos. This is why all of our representatives use HDR photos when we go to our clients’ home to take photos.

The article interviews a real estate agent who talks about the importance of great photos. The article states:

These pictures, she says, can have a huge influence in attracting prospective buyers to a house. Conversely, they also can shut the door to a sale.

“Real estate agents can’t sell something to (consumers) who (chose not to contact) him because they didn’t like the pictures,” says Dennis Huckaby, an architectural photographer in Blaine, Wash.

This quote definitely makes sense to us. If you have bad photos, it means that potential buyers might not even contact the seller! As a seller, you might have a great home, but you are reducing your chances to sell by not taking great photos.

Here is a recent photo taken by our amazing representative, Shawn Dixon:

When you have great house photos, the buyers will have a higher interest in your home and that will lead to better results when you are selling your home.

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If you are a buyer and you want to know more about the neighbourhood that you are moving into, it would be a great idea to seek out your local municipality’s “Official Plan”.

The Official Plan is a document that explains the city’s vision about how their town will look in the future. You can learn a great deal about the area where you live (or are planning on living). Information such as:

- Designated open space
- Future residential areas
- Future high density areas (condos)

You will also find information on transportation plans, arts and heritage plans…

Here is an example of the information that you can discover by reading an Official Plan: This is what the city of Richmond Hill has planned for the area at Hwy 7 and Yonge Street.

That’s amazing! And it’s information that buyers and sellers might want to know before they decide to move into the area.

If you are interested in your city or town’s “Official Plan”, I would recommend to visit your municipality’s website or simply google seach “City Name Official Plan”. Here are some links to the official plan for specific cities:

Richmond Hill
Kitchener
Waterloo
London
Barrie
Markham

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A Survey is another factor in selling a home that the general public might have questions about. Here is some information about The Survey.

What is a Survey?

In Ontario, the type of survey that is most useful is called the Surveyors Real Property Report. It is completed by a trained surveyor and it will include details such as

- Dimensions and locations of property boundaries
- Location of all buildings relative to the property boundaries
- Location of adjacent properties, roads, lanes
- The type and location of any land-related encumbrances or interests on the property title including utility rights-of-way, roadways, neighbour’s rights-of-way, etc.

The costs to produce and purchase a survey can vary from $1000-$2000. The costs will vary depending on factors such as size of lot, number of buildings, and whether your lot has trees and fences.

Do you have a survey?

If you don’t have a current survey for your home, don’t worry. You don’t need a survey to buy or sell a home.

Why is a survey not necessary?

The main reason for having a survey is so that the buyer will be confident in knowing exactly where the property line is located so that they can make sure that nothing is encroaching on their property. However, title insurance protects buyers from “access related problems”, such as rights of way or easements.

What if the Buyer demands a survey?

The concept of providing a survey is similar to the concept of a home inspection: If they buyer really wants one, they can pay for it. Often a “survey condition” is included in an offer. For example, the buyer’s offer may be conditional on “the seller providing a current survey”. If this clause is included, and the seller does not have a survey, then the seller can choose to accept the offer and have a survey completed, or not accept the offer and ask the buyer to re-submit the offer without that clause.

Does your lawyer have a copy of the survey?

A Lawyer would only have a survey if one was provided the last time the home was bought/sold (and the same lawyer was being used). Also the Surveyors Real Property Report is not kept by the land registry. However, remember that a survey is not needed. Only if either the buyer or seller demand a survey, or either will not proceed unless the survey is provided, will someone need to order, and pay for, a survey.

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A recent Toronto Star article has some useful information on home inspections. The article can be found at:

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/309881

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The Canadian Real Estate Association has begun to air TV commercials trying to promote using a real estate agent over selling your home privately. You can view the commericals here:

http://www.realtor.ca/commercials.htm

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A recent Toronto Star article talks about the different financing options now available to home buyers. The article discusses:

- You can now pay off your mortgage over 30 to 40 years, instead of up to 25 years as before.

- You can now get a conventional mortgage by putting down 20 per cent of the purchase price.

- You can now qualify for a low-down-payment mortgage if you’re self-employed or work on commissions.

- You can now qualify for a mortgage if your total debt load is more than 40 per cent.

- You can now put down only 3 per cent of the purchase price.

Here is a link to the article written by Ellen Roseman:

40-year mortgages have arrived

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MLS is changing the rules in order to “protect their MLS trademark”. Here is a recent Real Estate Article from an Ottawa based writer for Canadian Business Magazine.

The author also posted some info on his blog about his own experiences selling For-Sale-By-Owner.

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ByTheOwner.com’s properties for sale can now take advantage of the 30 Million Facebook users!

On June 14th, ByTheOwner.com released our exclusive Facebook application. The application was built by our programmers and it allows our properties (Front photo and info) to be uploaded to Facebook.

Facebook is on it’s way to becoming the most visited website in the world. Currently there are 30 million users and there will be 50 million by the end of 2007. Here are the number of Facebook users in specific Canadian cities as of June 13th:

Toronto, ON - 641,221 (about 15% of the population)
Vancouver, BC - 281,030 (about 10% of the population)
Barrie, ON - 50,515 (about 40% of the population)
Kitchener, ON- 77,369 (about 20% of the population)
London, ON - 90,734 (about 25% of the population)
Ottawa, ON - 147,212
Hamilton, ON - 68,054
Kingston, ON - 35,285
Montreal, QC - 129,216

The ByTheOwner.com Facebook Application can be activated by clicking on the Facebook button in any listing.

After the listing has been uploaded, you can share the listing with your friends (and their friends) and you can place the home in the Facebook Marketplace and advertise it to everyone in your city.

Thanks to our ByTheOwner.com programmers who have worked very hard to get this up and running so quickly!

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HGTV has great tips on how to get ready to sell your home and how to stage your home.

Their Designed to Sell program is all about staging your home and making appeal to buyers so that you can make the best impact and get the most money for your home. There is no doubt that having a clean, uncluttered, and fresh smelling home makes an enormace difference in helping you sell. At ByTheOwner.com we list more than 200 homes per week, and we can see the difference it makes. If a home is well prepared when we come to take the photos, and the owner is ready for showings, it is more than likely that the home will sell in 2-6 weeks. Of couse the home also needs to be priced according to similar properties in the area, but the fact is that if your home looks great, then buyers will choose your home over the unprepared house down the street. If your home IS unprepared, you can expect buyer to bring in lower offers or not even bother to out in an offer at all.

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