Investing and Personal Finance
I’m gearing up to buy my second investment property. Now that I’ve been at the university for a year, settled in pretty well (it’s not looking like they’re going to kick me out) and know the area a bit better, it’s time to consider buying instead of renting. My plan is to be here at [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs.  |
Rent-to-own (also known as lease-option) is a popular real estate strategy in the US and has been making its way into Canada in “get-rich-quick through real estate” circles. This agreement, between a landlord and tenant, involves the landlord selling the tenant the OPTION to buy the property at a fixed price at some point in [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
I recently enjoyed a post about a tenant referring her friends as potential new tenants on Single Guy and Money. It might just be a specialized case of what I’ve wrote about before as “statistical karma” but I’ve found that being a good landlord to your tenants is a good way to help YOURSELF out. [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
I came across the idea of “Condotels” (also know as hotel-condos or Condo Hotels) a couple of years ago when a man was advertising them on craigslist Toronto. More recently a real estate club that I’m on their mailing list sent out a solicitation for people to invest in a Muskoka condo hotel and I [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
I’ve written before about quotes being twisted for various purposes and being misleading. One witticism for real estate investing which means what it says is “Buy land! They aren’t making any more of it”. The wisdom that’s supposedly encapsulated in this saying is that there is a finite amount of space on planet Earth and [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
My parents (Hi Mom and Dad!) are planning to buy a new house in the near future after living in their current house for 40 years. Right now they are in the process of figuring out how to get a real estate agent. Unfortunately I can’t be of much help to them since I don’t [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
Buying a house is a very difficult decision – there are large sums of money involved, the transaction costs and hassle of moving mean that you can’t just buy another house if you don’t like the one you end up with, and you don’t have enough information to make a completely informed decision. The best [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
Pros and cons of real estate investing vs. investing in dividend stocks
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
It seems that doom and gloom is everywhere in the economic and real estate world. US banks are falling like flies, US real estate is dropping like a rock – the only thing that is going up is foreclosures! I was recently talking to a friend who is trying to sell a house and he [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
My friend Christine has kindly agreed to write a series of posts on her experiences with buying a home for the first time which will be posted occasionally. See Part 10 – Home owner insurance. Other bits and drabs We were glad that as first-time homeowners, we did not have another property to sell [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
I alluded to this idea months back, but Telly didn’t like it, so I dropped it (whenever possible I like to do what Mike or Telly tell me). Recently its come up with a couple of friends, so I felt it was worth revisiting. A friend is planning to move to another area, but she [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
My friend Christine has kindly agreed to write a series of posts on her experiences with buying a home for the first time which will be posted occasionally. See Part 9 – Closing costs. Insurance of various kinds In arranging insurance for our house, my husband and I were presented with other forms [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
My friend Christine has kindly agreed to write a series of posts on her experiences with buying a home for the first time which will be posted occasionally. See Part 8 – Success! In addition to the fees paid to a real estate lawyer for his/her professional services (approximately $1100 and up), you will also [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
My friend Christine has kindly agreed to write a series of posts on her experiences with buying a home for the first time which will be posted occasionally. See Part 7 – A close call. Having inured ourselves to the speed-of-light pace of home buying in downtown Toronto, we had expected to be looking for [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
Dave, who is in the process of buying a house asked the following question in the comments recently I would appreciate some advice as far as asking price and renovations. We are currently looking at purchasing an older home that will require 80K. The current owners did nothing (and I mean nothing) to the house [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
Apparently new home owners here in Canada haven’t learned much from their American counterparts because 40 year long term mortgages are getting more and more popular. According to a TD bank representative about 60% of first-time home buyers are opting for a 40 year mortgage which indicates that they are having a hard time affording [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
Now that we are in the sub-prime era, it has become very fashionable to declare that home owners that bought houses with little or no down payment are a big reason why foreclosures are at record levels. I have to respectfully disagree. In my opinion, when buying a house, it doesn’t make a big difference [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
NOTE: All software linked to in this post is NON-AFFILIATE. We don’t make any money off of any of these, I’m just linking to them because I think they’re interesting. The Reflexive games allow one hour of free play before purchase. A few months ago I posted some ideas for a real estate video game [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
My brother has to travel constantly for his job. While he was in North America, he and his girlfriend owned a Mazda3. As they were getting ready to leave North America they wanted to sell their car (instead of paying for it to sit in storage). A bunch of his co-workers were also going to [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
Algonquin sky I’ve been reading some “sky is falling” articles lately regarding underwater mortgages or upside down mortgages, where the amount owed by the house owner is greater than the value of the home. These are often referenced in the same sentence as subprime mortgages. Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t understand the [...]
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The RESP Book: The Simple Guide to Registered Education Savings Plans Everything you need to know about RESPs. |
