B.C. Vacation Real Estate Snapped Up By Rich Albertans

With the Canadian dollar going south, rich Albertans are looking west as they snap up ritzy vacation properties in British Columbia.

Whistler, Sun Peaks, and Vancouver Island are just a few places where buyers from Wild Rose country are shelling out for recreational homes.

The dropping value of the Canadian dollar — which has sunk from US$0.88 last year to $0.75 on Monday — is part of the reason Albertans are turning away from vacation properties in areas such as California and Arizona, or Sun Belt destinations like Hawaii and Mexico.

Home Maintenance Tips for Fall and Winter

CMHC: Home Maintenance Tips for Fall and Winter

Protect Your Home - and Your Investment - In Every Season

OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Nov. 30, 2011) - If you're like most Canadians, your home is probably your most important investment. The best way to protect that investment is by taking a few minutes each month to inspect your home, and carry out a regular schedule of maintenance and repairs. With a little simple seasonal maintenance, you can prolong the life of your home, and put a stop to some of the most common - and costly - problems, before they occur.

To help you make sure your home stays healthy, safe and comfortable in every season, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) offers a number of practical tips, tools and resources, such as the About Your House series of fact sheets covering a wide range of topics related to owning and maintaining a home.

To prepare your home for the fall and winter, for example, clean leaves, nests and other obstructions from your eavestroughs, roof and chimney, and test the downspouts to ensure there is adequate drainage away from your home.

Make sure the ground around your home slopes away from the foundation. This will help keep water and melting snow away from your house, and out of your basement. Also, make sure all your windows and skylights close tightly, and test your plumbing shut-off valves to be sure they're working properly.

Clean or replace your furnace air filters every month, and have your furnace serviced by a qualified technician every two years if you use gas, or once a year if you have an oil furnace. During the winter months, monitor your home for condensation on the windows or other signs of excessive moisture. Too much moisture indoors can cause damage over time, and may even pose a health risk to you and your family.

Check your attic regularly for frost accumulation, and inspect your roof for ice dams or icicles. If you find excessive frost inside, or icicles and ice dams on the roof surface, consult CMHC's About Your House fact sheet: Attic Venting, Attic Moisture and Ice Dams for advice.

Through regular home maintenance, you can often prevent larger and more costly home repair expenses in the future. It's also a good idea to put aside a little in your budget each month for an "emergency fund" for your home. An emergency fund allows you to handle any repairs or maintenance issues that might come up, without sacrificing your financial well-being or peace of mind.

For more tips, get a free copy of CMHC's About Your House fact sheets or sign up for a free monthly home maintenance newsletter at www.cmhc.ca/enewsletters. For more than 65 years, CMHC has shared a wealth of knowledge and housing expertise, as well as useful tools and guidance, to help Canadians enjoy an informed and assured housing experience. To consult or download copies of any of CMHC's tools and resources, visit www.cmhc.ca.

November is the first ever Financial Literacy Month. This is the final article in a series of four, focusing on creating awareness of the various tools and resources that are available to help Canadians make informed and responsible housing decisions.

ADNAN HAHSMI BROKER OF RECORD WOLF REALTY INC.,BROKERAGE 

50 INSANE FACTS ABOUT CANADA

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ADNAN HASHMI REALTOR

First Time investing in Real Estate? Read This

Many people consider investing in real estate as a way to build a nest egg and have tenants help you pay the mortgage. There are pros and cons to taking that leap, but if you do, here are 10 things to know.

1.Visit with a mortgage broker or your bank to determine how much money you can afford to borrow responsibly for your investment.

2.Look for properties that generate a positive cash flow. What this means is that the rent that you receive from tenants should be enough to pay your mortgage payment, property taxes, utilities and insurance bills. Budget an additional ten percent on your overall payments to pay for minor repairs that will invariably arise. Currently this is very difficult to find in the Toronto area. Do not be afraid to expand your search to smaller communities, where you will be able to find more properties that match your search criteria.

3.Use an experienced local real estate agent who also invests in real estate themselves. Investors learn about the pitfalls only through first-hand experience, both good and bad, and you want that experience working for you as well.

4.Have any property inspected by a professional home inspector. In addition, find a contractor who you can trust to give you the right advice for any minor repairs or renovations that may be required, especially for older properties, in order to add the most value to your investment.

5.Consult with your accountant and lawyer as to how you will take ownership of the property. There are some benefits in taking title in the name of a limited company, in order to protect yourself against personal liability should someone get hurt on the property and for other tax planning purposes. However, on the other hand, you will also have to pay about $1,000 in incorporation fees and have to file a separate tax return each year for your company.

6.Keep proper records of income and expenses for your investment property. Do not mingle these with your personal bank account as it will become difficult to properly trace this when you have to file a tax return at the end of the year, regardless whether you own the investment in your personal name or in a company name.

7.If you are buying with a partner, make sure you have a proper partnership or joint venture agreement to protect both of you should things not work out as planned. In particular, provisions should be made if one of the partners wants to sell and the other one doesn’t, one partner is not paying their share of expenses or what happens if one of the partners dies.

8.Hire an experienced property manager to assist you in finding suitable tenants and dealing with any ongoing maintenance, repairs or other complaints by tenants. You do not wish to be woken up in the middle of the night to handle emergency repairs. Budget an additional $100 per month for this service.

9.Be careful not to buy and sell properties quickly. The Canada Revenue Agency may view this activity as business income. This means that you will have to pay tax on any profit you make on your investment. It is preferable to buy properties for the long term, rent them out and use your positive cash flow to reduce the amount of your mortgage owing, building equity in your property. If you then sell years later for a profit, it will likely be classified as a capital gain and thus one half of your gain will be tax free.

10.Don’t be afraid to walk away if the deal does not work for you, no matter how much time you may have invested in the property.

Adnan Hashmi Broker of Record experienced realtor Wolf Realty inc.,Brokerage 

Why Invest in Canada?

Innovation + Stability = Profitability

If you are looking for a dynamic and prosperous country in which to invest, innovate, grow or expand your business on the world stage, Think Canada!

Canada welcomes foreign business investments and offers many competitive advantages:

A welcoming business environment

Canada is the best country in the G-20 to do business, according to both Forbes and Bloomberg.

Source: Forbes and Bloomberg

A strong growth record

Canada led all G-7 countries in economic growth over the past decade (2005–2014).

Source: The World Bank

Unparalleled market access

Once CETA comes into force, foreign investors in Canada will have assured preferential access to both NAFTA and the EU - a vibrant market with a combined GDP of US$38 trillion, or nearly one-half of the world’s output of goods and services.

Source: The World Bank

A highly educated workforce

Canada’s workforce is the most highly educated among members of the OECD, with half of its working-age population having a tertiary level education.

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Low business tax costs

Total business tax costs in Canada are by far the lowest in the G-7 and 46 percent lower than those in the United States.

Source: KPMG

Competitive R&D environment

Canada offers the lowest business costs in the G-7 for R&D-intensive sectors, with a 15.8 percent cost advantage over the United States.

Source: KPMG

Financial stability

For the eighth consecutive year, the World Economic Forum has declared Canada’s banking system to be the soundest in the world.

Source: World Economic Forum

A great place to invest, work, and live

Canada is one of the most multicultural countries in the world, with world-class universities, a universal health care system and clean and friendly cities. The OECD’s Better Life Index shows Canada as best in the G-7 in terms of overall living conditions and quality of life.

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

20 interesting facts about Canada!!!

1. At 9 984 670 sq km and comprised of 6 time zones, Canada is huge!
2. Canada is also home to the longest street in the world. Yonge Street in Ontario starts at Lake Ontario, and runs north through Ontario to the Minnesota border, a distance of almost 2000 kilometres.
3. While we’re talking ‘longest’, here’s another record: Canada has the world’s longest coastline at 202 080 km.
4. A bear cub named Winnipeg was exported from Canada to the London Zoo in 1915. A little boy named Christopher Robin Milne loved to visit Winnipeg (or Winnie for short) and his love for the bear cub inspired the stories written by his father, A.A. Milne, about Winnie-the-Pooh.
   
   

   It’s thanks to a little bear from Canada called Winnipeg that A.A. Milne invented Winnie-the-Pooh for his son Christopher.
5. The Canadian motto, A Mari Usque ad Mare, means “From sea to sea.”
6. Toronto’s Rogers Centre (formerly known as the SkyDome) is home to the largest Sony big screen in the world, measuring 10 m x 33.6 m.
7. The Blackberry Smartphone was developed in Ontario, at Research In Motion’s Waterloo offices.
8. The Big Nickel in Sudbury, Ontario is the world’s largest coin. It is a huge reproduction of a 1951 Canadian nickel and measures 9 meters in diameter.
9. Canada has twice been invaded by the USA, first in 1775 and then 1812.
10. Actor Leslie Nielsen is Canadian and his brother Erik was theDeputy Prime Minister of Canada for two years, from 1984 to 1986.
    
    

    Leslie and Erik Nielson, even when you become deputy Prime Minister you can still be upstaged by your brother wearing a dress.
11. Canada holds the record for the most gold medals ever won at the Winter Olympics, since taking 14 Golds at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
12. Sandy Gardiner, a journalist with the Ottawa Journal in the 60’s coined the term ‘Beatlemania’ while he was writing a story about the Beatles.
13. Canada basically got its name by mistake. When Jaques Cartier, a French explorer, came to the new world, he met with local Natives who invited them to their ‘kanata’ (the word for ‘village’. The party mistakenly thought the name of the country was “Kanata” or Canada.
14. The Mounted Police were formed in 1873, with nine officers and in 1920 merged with the Dominion Police to become the famous Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which today has close to 30 000 members.
15. Canada is home to about 55 000 different species of insects.
16. Montreal is home to many beautiful churches and is often called The City of Saints or City of a hundred bell towers
17. Ontario is believed to be home to the world’s smallest jail, which measures only 24.3 sq metres.
18. The Hotel de Glace in Quebec is built every year using 400 tons of ice and 12 000 tons of snow. Every summer it melts away and every winter it is rebuilt.
    
    

    This ice hotel in Quebec is rebuilt every year to open for three months. It takes 50 workers a month and a half to construct.
19. Canada’s only desert in British Columbia is only 15 miles long and is the only desert in the world with a long boardwalk for visitors to walk on.
20. Famous Canadians include Pamela Anderson, Leonard Cohen, Avril Lavigne, Keanu Reeves and Jim Carrey.