In the current Toronto real estate climate, with the prices of urban homes starting at close to or over $1 million, many homebuyers may decide to buy a home with a basement apartment to offer some flexibility for their mortgage payments or retrofit the basement into an income apartment after they move in. Whether a basement apartment is legal or not, the retrofit done by the previous home owners can often impact your mortgage loan application if you need the tenant to be in a lease to qualify for your loan. As a Toronto home buyer, how do you know if the basement apartment of an existing home is legal or illegally retrofitted? If you plan on having rental income to qualify for a home purchas

When a Buyer has purchased into a condo development, and upon taking possession of the unit, the period between the interim occupancy date to the unit transfer date is called the occupancy period. At the interim closing, the Buyer will be asked to provide a number of post-dated cheques to the Builder to cover the monthly occupancy fee for the period until the condo is registered. So how will the occupancy fee affect your budgeting? I get asked this question a lot. Technically there is no exact minimum or maximum charged by the developer, but the amount cannot exceed the prescribed interest calculated on a monthly basis on 1] the unpaid balance of the purchase price at a prescribed rate; 2] a

Yesterday was the Annual Spring Wild Leek and Maple Syrup Festival 2016 at the Stadtlander Eigensinn Farm in Singhampton, which is about 2 hours north of urban Toronto. Eigensinn Farm grows and raise their own vegetable and livestock led by Canadian Chef Michael Stadtlander, with the mission to share his wisdom on locally sourced food. You can read more about Michael's bio here. ‬ The weather was everything but Spring-like. Four hours of driving, at 0.5 degrees celsius, with hail and blizzard, my husband and I arrived feeling much excitement. Everyone was there with one common goal... for the love of food and reconnecting with the earth. Every year, over a dozen chefs from the city's well kn