Electricity

Knowing if the home you are buying has adequate electricity to meet your needs is very important. Your home inspector should explain the electricity set-up in the home you are planning on buying. However, before the home inspector arrives, here is some information that might help you.

How Many Amps
Most homes now are 200 amps. However, some older homes might still have 100 amps service. If you want to check the size of your service equipment, this is very easy. Open the door on the electrical panel and look for the main breaker, usually at the top of the panel. There should be a number on the handle indicating the rated amps. It should say 100 or 200.

200 amp service is sufficient for most of the appliances in your home. However, 100 amp service might not have enough power to be able to handle all your appliances.. If all your appliances were on, (HDTV, computer, toaster, microwave, stove) you would most likely overload your electrical system.

For a buyer, the important lesson is to first check if there is 100amp or 200amp. If it’s 100, then you know that you will most likely need to upgrade. Your home inspector will verify for you.

Knob and Tube Wiring

Some old homes might have Knob and Tube wiring. While this might scare away buyers, it shouldn’t. The problem with knob and tube is that home insurance companies will not insure a home with that kind of wiring. However, you can still buy the home and agree to replace the wiring within 30-60 days. It could cost between $10,000-$20,000 depending on the size of the home.

It would be a shame to pass up a great home, that you might be able to get for $30,000 less that a similar home just because it has knob and tube. Why not buy the home for $30,000 less and then spend $15,000 fixing the wiring. If you do that, you will know that all your wiring is new!

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This is a graph of the Average 5-Year Residential Canadian Mortgage Rates from 1986 to 2009. It looks like a fun hill to ski down! I know the image looks small in the blog so here is a table of the average interest rate:

1986 - 11.18 %
1987 - 11.37 %
1988 - 11.82 %
1989 - 12.64 %
1990 - 12.2 %
1991 - 10.33 %
1992 - 9.11 %
1993 - 9.02 %
1994 - 9.28 %
1995 - 8.58 %
1996 - 7.5 %
1997 - 6.98 %
1998 - 7.14 %
1999 - 7.79 %
2000 - 7.68 %
2001 - 6.93 %
2002 - 6.36 %
2003 - 5.91%
2004 - 5.63 %
2005 - 5.73 %
2006 - 6.16 %
2007 - 6.38 %
2008 - 6.06 %
2009 - 5.65 %

The 5-year residential mortgage rate has averaged 8.23% since 1986. In the press there is some talk about an “asset bubble” and worry that some new home buyers might have difficulty in a few years if they have to renew their mortgage at a higher rate. I guess that the saying goes “what goes up, must come down” so perhaps the opposite might be true for mortgage rates.

No one can predict the future or know what mortgage rates are going to be in 1, 2, or 5 years from now, but a smart exercise might be to ask yourself “what if rates went to 8%? How much would our mortgage cost?”.

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The article interviews a real estate agent who talks about the importance of great photos. The article states:

These pictures, she says, can have a huge influence in attracting prospective buyers to a house. Conversely, they also can shut the door to a sale.

“Real estate agents can’t sell something to (consumers) who (chose not to contact) him because they didn’t like the pictures,” says Dennis Huckaby, an architectural photographer in Blaine, Wash.

This quote definitely makes sense to us. If you have bad photos, it means that potential buyers might not even contact the seller! As a seller, you might have a great home, but you are reducing your chances to sell by not taking great photos.

Here is a recent photo taken by our amazing representative, Shawn Dixon:

When you have great house photos, the buyers will have a higher interest in your home and that will lead to better results when you are selling your home.

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Your home’s heating source is a very important part of you home. Hence, it is a very important factor in the sale of your home because buyers want to make sure that the furnace is in good and working order. The last thing anyone wants is for the furnace to break.

Check For Regular Maintenance

Two things that a buyer should make note of is the age of the furnace and the regular maintenance of the furnace. A furnace is a lot like a car. The older it is, the more likely it is to break, but also, some people take very good care of their cars and they last forever, other people don’t take good care of their cars and they break after 5 years.

You might be able to tell the age of the furnace by the serial number. Sometimes the last 2 numbers are the date it was produced. Otherwise, you can google search the serial number and you should be able to find out how old the furnace is. The other area of concern is how often the furnace was serviced. You should see a tag or sticker with the last service date. If it was a long time ago, it might be a concern (Although as a buyer, if you own a home, ask yourself when was the last time you had your furnace serviced?).

What Does A Furnace Do?

Your furnace basically serves one purpose - It heats things up. It might heat water, air, or wood. Whatever substance that it heats up needs to be transferred to the rest of your home. The transfer can be through pipes (Radiant Heating) that have water or through air that is sent throughout your home by vents (Forced Air).

Radiant (hot water) Heating:

With this type of heating, your furnace will heat up your water and then send the water through pipes and into the rooms of your home. You will know that a home has this type of heating if you see radiators in the rooms, The radiators might look like this:

It is very common in most older homes. One of the disadvantages of this type of heating is that it can take longer to heat up your home. If you are cold and you increase the temperature, it might take 1-2 hours to feel the effects in your home. Also you need to be careful that your radiators or pipes don’t leak. Everyone knows that water can be very damaging to a home, and with this type of heat, you have water in most walls and in most rooms of your home.

Hot Air / Natural Gas Furnace:

By far, the most common type of heating in newer homes is Natural Gas/Forced hot air. This type of heating blows “hot air” throughout vents that are hidden in your walls. The heat comes our of little vents in each room. This type of heating works really quickly and it can be very efficient. So if you see vents like this in the home, it most likely means that you have a “forced air furnace.”

Wood Burning Furnace:

It’s not very common in urban areas of the country, but many older country homes are still heated by a wood burning furnace. This means that wood is placed in the furnace and burned. The hot air from the furnace is usually distributed in the vents ( the same way as the forced air). A wood burning furnace takes more effort. The wood needs to be physically moved into your basement and then added to the furnace on a daily basis. On those cold winter nights, you will need to load up the furnace before you go to bed so that it burns all night. You also might wake up to a cold home and need to go down to the basement and throw in some more wood. But wood furnaces also make your home smell so nice!

Electric baseboards:

Another type of heat, that does not require a furnace is Electric Baseboard Heating. Electric baseboard heating can be identified by baseboard heaters in the rooms. Each heater usually has it’s own dial to adjust the heat:

Hopefully this information is useful to buyers and sellers. If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to give us a call!

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The Official Plan is a document that explains the city’s vision about how their town will look in the future. You can learn a great deal about the area where you live (or are planning on living). Information such as:

- Designated open space
- Future residential areas
- Future high density areas (condos)

You will also find information on transportation plans, arts and heritage plans…

Here is an example of the information that you can discover by reading an Official Plan: This is what the city of Richmond Hill has planned for the area at Hwy 7 and Yonge Street.

That’s amazing! And it’s information that buyers and sellers might want to know before they decide to move into the area.

If you are interested in your city or town’s “Official Plan”, I would recommend to visit your municipality’s website or simply google seach “City Name Official Plan”. Here are some links to the official plan for specific cities:

Richmond Hill
Kitchener
Waterloo
London
Barrie
Markham

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Or you could get creative.

You could even say that this pumpkin is worth $15,000.

Happy Halloween from all of us at ByTheOwner.com!

Even better, the study also reported that 87-89% of Canadians under the age of 55 have internet access at home. This means that close to 90% of Canadians under the age of 55 have access to ByTheOwner.com’s listings.

ByTheOwner.com is Canada’s largest For Sale By Owner Network with more than 11,000 properties for sale and more than 70,000 homes sold.

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Gail’s blog has an enormous wealth of information (pun intended). However, I thought that her blog entitled “YOU Need To Be In Charge” contained a very valuable lesson to anyone selling or buying a home.

Gail points out that she watched a show called “Property Virgins” where “the host tell a couple that since the bank had pre-approved them for $350,000, that’s how much they should spend. She tried to convince her poor –sucker-clients that since the bank had run all their numbers, checked their credit history, calculated their debt-to-income ratio, it was the best judge of how much debt they could afford to take on. ”

Gail’s comments and suggestion that “YOU need to be in charge” is very similar to the message the ByTheOwner.com teaches. The first line of our Seller’s Guide quotes Epictetus: “Only the educated are free”.

We believe that selling a home, with or without an agent, involves education. Before you list a home, you need to know all the costs involved and you need to know how much money you will keep at the end of the process. You also need to know what services are being provided so that you can calculate if it’s a good decision.

Knowledge is power!

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10 Ways To Reduce Your Electricity Bill
10 Ways To Reduce Your Heating Bill
10 Ways To Reduce Your Water Bill
10 Ways To Reduce Your Cable Or Satellite TV Bill

Happy Saving!

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