Celebrations and Family Law

Last week I attended a course on Family law put on by two local lawyers. They had some great information on some of the latest judicial decisions coming down the pipes affecting various real estates transactions. Thinking about living common-law with someone and purchasing a house together? Be sure to protect yourselves with a co-habitation agreement. Seperating? Be sure to have the seperation agreement in place before making any major decisions about real estate. Obviously the lawyers are a little biased, but the key is to seek the advice of the lawyers early in the process to avoid needing much more of their services later on!

The pic is of first time home-buyer's L and D....so excited to move into their new digs in about a month. Nothing like plastic wine glasses and sparkling grape juice to celebrate! :)

This week I've been busy following up on some market evaluations and brushing up on the new City of Waterloo rental housing bylaw. The new bylaw has proven to be quite the nightmare already for some. It's been hard to get anyone from the city to give any answers on present licensing and even harder for clear answers on the bylaw set to come into effect April 2012. Generally though it's going to cost landlords more money, IF they can even get the licenses. Lots of bugs to work out and certainly not a pleasant thing to deal with for landlords in the city. The demand for investment properties in Waterloo has been rumoured to have gone down by about 30%....yikes! And if you've ever wanted to purchase an entire street, now is the time as an entire street in Northdale will be putting their homes up by auction because of the new bylaw. Tighter rental housing bylaws and licenses are certainly a positive thing, especially in neighbourhoods, like Northdale where students are everywhere, but this particular bylaw leaves landlords wondering how much more they will have to pay in inspections and licenses IF they can even get the license. The bylaw has limits on the number of people, limits on the amount of bedrooms in comparison to living space, and limits on proximity to other licensed properties. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Any questions as to how this may affect your rental property, pop me an email at krista@kristajonker.com