With an RBC Royal Bank® variable rate mortgage, your payment amount stays fixed for the term; however, the interest rate will fluctuate with any changes in the RBC® prime interest rate*.

This means that your monthly payments will remain the same, but if our prime rate goes down, more of your payment will go toward your principal. And if our prime rate goes up, more of the payment will go toward the interest. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you’re one of the lucky ones, for most homebuyers, a little financial assistance is needed when purchasing a home. This financial assistance is known as a mortgage. Read the rest of this entry »

King West Village is attaining high-class status in leaps and bounds. New investments are pouring into this formerly strictly working class area that once housed mainly factories and warehouses.

Today’s King Street West is home to Victoria and Georgian-style townhomes, spectacular lofts and condominiums and a nice mix of bohemian and mainstream retailers.

Among the recent projects to join the village is a 150,000 square-foot office development west of Spadina Ave., which will boast up to 12 floors of offices, street-level retail and on-site parking. A luxury condo development is also going up one block south with units starting at an unprecedented $1.5 million.

The office building concept was born when Allied Properties purchased a two-storey brock-and-beam structure at 544 King St. W., which was originally constructed in 1944. When an adjacent property on Morrison St. went on the market, new possibilities opened up in constructing a more grandiose building. With a nod to preserving some of the historic sensibility of the neighbourhood, developers plan to reuse beams, connectors and some of the brick from the old buildings in the new one.

Construction is expected to cost $40 million and be completed in late 2009.

Your condo is a mishmash of whatever you’ve found through the years. It has no definable style. Want a home with style? There’s no need to go to school to learn the basics of interior design. Start with the fundamentals. Start with colour.

For consistency, the colour of your walls should be complimented by the furnishings and decorative items in your home.

Fabrics used in a room should be consistent. Choose one type of fabric to appear in several places of the room. This is known as the “anchor fabric”. For example, the same fabric can be used for the curtains, the sofa, and a chair. This anchor fabric should ideally have three or more colours. That way, it’ll be easier to match other furnishings and decorations in the room without being too limited. The colour of the walls should be the main background colour of the anchor fabric.

The experts even provide a helpful mathematical equation to the perfect colour consistency in a room based on the anchor fabric:

60% of the room in the background colour + 30% in the mid-tone colour + 10% in the brightest colours.

The brightest, accent colours are generally reserved for decorative items and trimmings.

Prospective home buyers and sellers in the GTA can be forgiven for suspending their plans to move throughout the punishing winter of 2008.

Though resale home transactions in the GTA were at a moderate pace during the first half of March, sales declined by 14 per cent in the GTA and 18 per cent in Toronto compared to activity a year ago.

However, despite the understandable decrease, some areas continued to thrive despite the snowy weather. During the first half of March:

Georgina experienced a 39 per cent increase in sales.

The Agincourt area of Scarborough saw a 12 per cent overall increase in sales compared to a year ago based, primarily, on strong condominium unit sales.

Weston held strong with a 28 per cent increase over last year.

Condominium apartment sales in Toronto’s downtown core helped maintain healthy sales activity – up 11 per cent compared to a year ago.

As spring weather sparks renewed interest, the good news is that the value of homes in the city continues to appreciate. The average home in the GTA is $385,405 and $409,116 in Toronto, a five and four per cent increase respectively from last year.

Sinks. Typically made of stainless steel, they usually aren’t the focal point of kitchens. But a new trend may change that.

Designers and manufacturers have begun to replace the traditional metal sink with stone - particularly granite. Granite is a type of igneous rock (solidified molten magma) that has long been favoured by developers and contractors as an ideal material for surfaces that are exposed to the elements or are frequently used and abused. Countertops, floors, facades of buildings, and outdoor decorative items such as statues are typically made of granite. And now it’s the kitchen sink.

Granite is perfect for the sink. It is not only admired for its durability, being virtually scratch-resistant and able to withstand high temperatures, but it is also quite visually appealing. And since it’s a natural material, it is considered more “environmentally-sound” than the manmade alternatives.

For you as a seller, we examine current market trends, carefully examine your home, recommend what action should be taken to make it more attractive to buyers, and deal with many other issues all to determine the best and realistic price for your property. Then, we try to sell it.

And we do all of this without getting paid. That’s right. No need to pay your Realtor until they’ve sold your property. Realtors are paid until you get paid.

Real estate agents generally get paid about 5-6% of the final sale price of a property if they are the one chosen to sell the property. In this case, the agent representing the property is called the “listing agent”.

So how does a Realtor get paid if they aren’t the listing agent and are helping you buy a property? Well, homebuyers are pretty lucky. They don’t have to give one penny to their agent. All commissions to the Realtors involved in the transaction are paid for by that 5-6% from the sale price of the property. It is typical that the real estate agent representing the homebuyer and the listing agent divide this 5-6% evenly.

Therefore, if a condo sells for $400,000, then commission at 5% would be $20,000. The listing agent and Realtor representing the buyer would each get $10,000.