Guides & articles
Neighbourhood notes, buying explainers, cost breakdowns, market context and homeowner guidance.
An Ottawa income property is an operating business that happens to be a building. Buying a rental property changes the financing, the tax treatment and what you must budget for — and the number that decides whether it works is not the purchase price. What to run before you shortlist, and what makes a property a poor rental at any price.
Choosing a buyers agent is not the same problem as choosing a listing agent. You are picking someone who will tell you what to pay, and signing a buyer representation agreement that decides what you owe them — including if the seller offers nothing towards it. The questions to ask a buyer's agent, what to check first, and what to read before you sign.
Every agent you interview will be personable and well prepared — that is the job. Choosing a real estate agent to sell your home comes down to a public record you can check, knowledge of your street rather than the city, and advice that survives bad news. The questions to ask a real estate agent, and how to judge the answers.
Selling the family home and moving in later life is usually framed as releasing equity, and the arithmetic is less generous than people expect once transaction costs and condo fees are counted. What a move actually frees up, what adapting the home costs instead, and the City of Ottawa tax deferral that lets some owners stay put — with the 2026 thresholds stated.
Buying a duplex in Ottawa changes the financing more than the price does. An owner-occupied duplex, triplex or fourplex is financed close to how a house is; the same building bought purely to rent is not. Where the four-unit line sits, why the fifth unit changes everything, what house hacking really costs, and the fire separation question that decides the budget.
Three mortgage decisions that arrive years apart and are usually made in a hurry. What a fixed or variable rate actually buys you, why renewal is the moment most owners quietly give away money — including a 2024 rule change that made switching lenders easier — and how a prepayment penalty and the interest rate differential are calculated, before you need to know.
Every homeowner eventually hires someone in a hurry, at the worst moment, from the first name that answers. Ontario gives you a specific protection for exactly that: a contract signed in your home can be cancelled within 10 days, for any reason. How to choose a contractor when you have time — the contractor deposit, the insurance, the building permit for renovation work — and what changes in an emergency repair.
No lender funds a purchase without insurance in place, so an insurer's opinion of the house is a closing condition whether you treated it as one or not. Insurance for an older home turns on knob and tube, an oil tank, a flooded basement and a previous owner's claims — and if you cannot get home insurance on that address, the deal does not close. What a home insurance refusal really means, and when to find out.
An accepted offer is a binding contract, and most of what decides whether it goes well is settled before you sign it. Whether to make a conditional offer or a firm one, what an irrevocable date commits you to, where your deposit goes and the honest answer to can I get my deposit back, and exactly what you are entitled to be told when there are competing offers.
