Where you can learn all you need to know about finding and buying
a house in
St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, and the
Niagara Peninsula
Duncan Pollock Broker of Record
Duncan Pollock Real Estate Broker, Brokerage
427 Gate Street
Niagara-on-the-Lake,
Ontario, Canada L0S 1J0
Tel: (905) 468-3154
Cellular: (905) 704-9037
Fax: (905) 468-3812
e-mail: duncanpollock@sympatico.ca
(If you have tried sending any message to the old address (dsp.pru@sympatico.ca) from October 29th onwards, it will NOT have reached me and, if you don't mind, needs to be resent to duncanpollock@sympatico.ca )
What's related?
Someone has estimated that there
are now about four million real estate websites!
Whatever
the truth to it, you'll benefit by visiting at least the following
ones -- plus the others they can take you to.
Location, location, location
The Canadian Real Estate Association
can help you learn what's available almost anywhere from
coast to coast and from just about any real estate company or
agent. Its site begins with a map of the whole country that
you can narrow down, one step at a time, to whichever location
you're interested in. This obviously
includes the various Niagara communities, whose Niagara Falls, St. Catharines,
and Welland Real Estate Boards are now amalgamated as a single
Niagara Association of Realtors.
On the whole, though, you need to contact a local agent (myself included!)
to identify the listings that are presently on the market. throughout the
Niagara area.
Mortgage information
One of the most complete explanations of
the ins and outs of mortgages can be found in a booklet published
by the Canadian
Bankers Association. With no attempt to promote
one bank over another, it covers all the bases and gives you
topnotch information and advice. The booklet is free and
well worth getting hold of. It can also be seen -- and read,
chapter by chapter and page by page -- online.
Home inspection
Today's buyers are showing an increasing
interest in having someone go over a house before they buy
it. An outlay of a few hundred dollars can pay dividends
in avoiding surprises or, at least, knowing what to expect in
the years ahead. There are several firms specializing in
this field, but the undoubted leader is Carson Dunlop who, as it's
said, "wrote the book on it." Their site is well worth a
visit.
Legal costs and concerns
Although real estate people are expected,
to an increasing degree, to be aware of the legal problems that
can arise in selling and buying a home, your really need a lawyer's
services to bring everything to a successful and rightful conclusion,
and you are, on the whole, ill advised to forego them. Thus,
the lawyer you choose is the obvious contact for answers to your questions,
as well as for a more exact idea of your costs.
However, you can usefully forearm yourself by visiting a page
that I created a couple of years ago. The information was extracted from
a Canadian website that unfortunately no longer exists, it provided what I
liked to think of as a decent enough explanation of things. You
can reach the page by clicking here.
Regional Niagara
The Niagara Association of Realtors has its own website, which you can find here It incorporates
a wide range of community information but also features a section that lists
Open Houses that are scheduled for the current and forthcoming weeks.
A browse through its pages and the mass of facts and figures it can
lead you to is worth every penny -- if only to give you an idea of where
your taxes are going!
Industrial, commercial, and investment real
estate
This highly specialized field has some
different business practices, some extremely knowledgable
participants, and a host of reasons for thinking of alternatives
to buying and selling single family homes. There's a growing
number of sites dealing with it, but ICI World is probably the one that's
best known and most used, because it greatly facilitates connections
between would-be sellers and could-be buyers. Some public
access is possible, but you need to contact one of its executive
members to get the most out of it. On this point, however, I'll
be only too pleased to help you, as I'm registered with the site in
that capacity myself.
In turn -- if you'll forgive me for some
self-promotion -- you may find it useful to visit an additional website that I've
recently being given an invitation to create. It includes
a number of (relatively) short pages that deal with various factors
that impinge on successful involvement in the non-residential real
estate market.
Royal LePage website
One of the most comprehensive corporate
real estate websites is the one put together by the Royal LePage marketing people
-- and, although I'm now operating on my own, I have no hesitation in
recommending it. It anticipates just about every question anyone
could ask, and it provides answers that are noticeably free from hype.
Whether you're interested in selling, buying, seeking background information
on a host of related topics, or just plain looking for property anywhere
in Canada, it's well worth a look.
Back to the beginning
Getting
the most for your money
What a Buyer Agent does
The Buyer Agency Agreement
Any questions? Something not clear? Need to know more? Just click here to e-mail me.
| You can add yourself to my mailing
list if you wish. I send a newsletter out each month that deals with a variety of issues related to the process of buying property. There's nothing hard sell involved, I can assure you. Rather, the idea is to share my thoughts with you about how I believe buyers can be better served by the real estate industry. And to get a sense of the contents, you can take a look at some of my previous mailings by clicking here. |
Note: If you have
an interest in buying or leasing industrial, commercial, or investment
property, you may find it useful to browse an alternative website
that I was recently encouraged to create. It explains my
role in offering exclusive buyer representation for purchasers
and lessees of ICI properties and deals with a number of factors that
call for attention when you're involved with the non-residential
real estate market.It also provides links to several databases of currently available broker and private listings of industrial, commercial, and investment properties. Together, they cover an extensive range of property types and locations throughout North America and in different countries around the world.
You'll find the site at http://www.iciniagara.com and you can use its pages to directly e-mail me for complete details and/or to arrange a viewing of any listing that appeals to you.
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Internet Directory of Real Estate Professionals
SearchSight Directory
Canada Real Estate Directory / Universal Real Estate Directory
City Wide Pages St. Catharines / Proudly Canadian Business Directory
Premier Directory / SeekOn/Niagara-on-the-Lake
As a complete change from all you've seen/read so far, you can, if you wish, take a look at My In Tray.
- A number of the photos used in this website are the copyright (and used with the permission) of WebGraphicsZone.com and iStockPhoto.com.
- The copyright to this web site as a whole is claimed and retained by me as its author, but permission is hereby granted for you to print out and/or distribute the site in its entirety or in part(s), provided that due acknowledgement of my authorship is included.
- The opinions expressed in this web site are primarily mine and, to a large degree, reflect conditions in the Niagara Peninsula -- at least as I see them -- rather than elsewhere. They do not, however, necessarily conform with the views held by some of my colleagues in the real estate industry.