Guides & articles
Neighbourhood notes, buying explainers, cost breakdowns, market context and homeowner guidance.
An apartment viewing is a sales appointment run by someone paid to fill the unit. Who pays the leasing agent, what a leasing agent fee changes, whether utilities included means anything in dollars, what tenant screening to expect — and the subjects nobody at a showing has any reason to raise.
Before you can price my home becomes how to price it, you need a home value you can defend. How comparables — comps — actually produce a market value, why a valuation, a home evaluation and a lender's appraisal are three different things, what overpricing costs in time on market, and the best time to sell in Ottawa.
Ontario tenants have stronger protections than most renters realize — and rental markets move too fast to learn them mid-crisis. What's legal at signing including first and last month's rent, what the standard lease means, rent control and the guideline increase, landlord entry and notice of entry, pets and no-pet clauses, and how to break a lease or end a tenancy properly.
Ontario landlording is a regulated business wearing a side-hustle costume. Your landlord obligations from day one: whether the unit is legal, screening tenants inside the rules, the standard lease, how rent increases really work, maintenance, notice of entry, and how a tenancy lawfully ends.
If you're moving from one owned home to another, the sequence matters more than the price. Each order is a different risk — living in limbo versus carrying two homes — and the honest answer is choosing the one you can afford to have go wrong. How to line up closing dates, when a sale-of-home condition helps and when it kills an offer, and what moving between homes actually costs if the two dates do not meet.
When you bought your condo, the status certificate protected you. Selling, it's the document buyers will use to judge your building — and you can't fix what's in it. What you can do is know its contents before buyers do, price accordingly, and present your building's story honestly. What the condo board's records reveal, and why a status certificate — an estoppel certificate in some provinces — now works for the buyer rather than for you.
Life changes faster than construction schedules. If you've signed with a builder and need out before closing, an assignment sale — selling your purchase contract rather than the home — may be possible. It runs through the builder's consent, careful tax treatment, and paperwork that punishes improvisation. If you need to assign my contract before closing, this is what a preconstruction assignment involves — and why flipping a new build is taxed differently from selling a home.
You can sell a home with a tenant in it — but the tenancy doesn't end because you listed, showings have rules, and ending a tenancy for a buyer's own use involves specific forms, notice periods and real penalties for getting it wrong. This is the guide sellers skip and regret. What happens to tenant rights on sale, how showings with tenants actually work, and what a buyer own use N12 does and does not allow.
Both routes genuinely work. The honest comparison isn't 'realtor commission versus free' — it's a professional service against your own time, market data, negotiating stamina and paperwork. What the commission and agent fees actually buy, what it takes to sell your house yourself, and whether commission is negotiable.
