The Anchor Weekly – The Chestermere Lake News

Following in the tradition of so many others out there, I thought putting a list together of some of my projections for 2012 might be a fun idea. So here are a few of my thoughts of what is going to happen around us in 2012 in the Real Estate market. The Rental Market is going to get tight and people will complain about it. This one shouldn’t come as a surprise as we are already have seen vacancies drop drastically around Calgary and the onslaught of people moving to Alberta for work won’t let up. This will immediately impact [...]

Slumlords, just the sound of it makes you think of broken down tenements in places like New York City. You know, the types of buildings we see in movies with boarded up windows, garbage in the hallways and essentially unfit living conditions. We’d like to think we are sheltered from those types of properties and I suppose for the most part we are. The problem here isn’t so much large apartment style blocks that fit the description, but rather similar situations on a smaller scale. Smaller apartment buildings, various sizes of plexes and even single family homes are much more [...]

I just received a copy of the CMHC’s Rental Market Report for the Calgary Region and all I can see in it is good news! Unfortunately, it has no details on the surrounding areas, but we all know what affects Calgary, also affects the surrounding areas like Chestermere. Now I’ve been talking about how the number of vacancies out there has been decreasing for months now and this report confirms it. Not only have they seen the apartment vacancy rate drop to 1.9%, but also they are seeing rents increase. It’s only a little bit, but as vacancies remain below [...]

Last week I talked about renting out rooms in to your home to people and how you fall under the Innkeeper’s Act. This can be a great way to create some extra income, but it also can be a bit tricky when you end up sharing the common areas of your home with strangers. An alternative that is much more common place is renting out part of your personal residence. Renting out a basement suite or even living in the basement and renting out an upper unit is a great way for a homeowner to create some extra income and [...]

It was way back in 2002 that I found became interested in Real Estate as an investment opportunity. The trigger for this was the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki, that I read over the Christmas holidays and then forced my wife to read. She managed to zip through it in less than two days and that started us on a huge search for knowledge about Real Estate. I was already a pretty voracious reader at the time, trying to mix a couple of non-fiction self improvement style books in and then throwing in a fiction book to [...]

Nice headline isn’t it. While it’s true that if interest rates were to triple from their current rates it would cause serious grief to the housing markets, it really isn’t very likely. This is an example of some of the bad news headlines that seem to pop up quite often. The headline could just as easily have read, Housing Market Will Boom If The Economy Booms. Also a very true statement, and likely more realistic to what we may see over the next several years as the local provincial economy chugs along. Although, the real story often isn’t just the [...]

I remember watching The Learning Channel (TLC) back in the mid 2000′s and it seems like every show they had on back then was about flipping houses and making it look easy to generate huge profits. There was Flip This House, Property Ladder and even a Canadian production called The Big Flip. Back then I were busy flipping several houses a year, so all of this was right up our alley and the perfect programming for my wife and I to watch whenever we could. Except there was a bit of a disconnect between what we saw in real life [...]

Being a landlord is sometimes like being a gambler. You’re betting on your judge of character and ability to accurately screen problem tenants from ever gaining access to your property and since you’re “the house” in this case, odds are in your favour. Significantly in your favour if you take your screening seriously, but every now and then, that pair of aces you are holding just don’t pan out. It’s really just a matter of time actually, because eventually something out of your control can cause you some sleepless nights. Over my history as a landlord I’ve had tenants get [...]

This Real Estate market is killing me. Anyone else feel the same? Every time things start looking better in the world, up pops something to knock a table leg out and start the worldwide economy teetering once again. As soon as these fear headlines hit the major media outlets, everyone starts hunkering down expecting the bottom to fall out everywhere. And maybe it will, just not around here. Now I’m not saying it won’t affect our local housing markets, I’m just pointing out it won’t be for economic fundamentals but rather for F.U.D. If you aren’t familiar with F.U.D., it’s [...]

Cash flow is definitely king when it comes to owning a rental property, but what can you do to ensure you receive the maximum amount of cash flow out of your rental property? You can always start by looking at your mortgage. There will always be an ongoing debate amongst mortgage holders regarding whether variable rate mortgages are the way to go or a fixed rate mortgages is better. I personally have both, but my preference has always been variable rate mortgages. With rates as low as they have been over the last several years my variable rates have saved [...]