Calgary Real Estate News & Blog - Stats, News & Opinions

320 Adams CR SE, Calgary, Alberta

Cliff Stevenson — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 06:04:00 -0700

I just sold this Single Family Home at 320 Adams CR SE, Calgary, Alberta Acadia.

View this recently sold Single Family Home or see all my home sales.

A great location for this 3 bedroom bungalow situated on a pie-shaped lot. Lots of upside and renovation potential for this family home located steps from shopping, access to mass transit, schools, recreation centres, and parks (including Acadia Athletic Park). The upper level is comprised of 3 good-sized bedrooms, a 5-pc bathroom, kitchen with eating area, and a large living room. The basement is consists of several hobby rooms and recreation rooms, a laundry room, and a 3-pc bathroom. Lots of room for a garage in the large backyard, which offers lots of privacy with mature trees. An excellent opportunity to own a home with lots of potential in the popular neighbourhood of Acadia.

65 Glamis GD SW, Calgary, Alberta

Cliff Stevenson — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:58:44 -0600

I just sold this Condo at 65 Glamis GD SW, Calgary, Alberta Glamorgan.

View this recently sold Condo or see all my home sales

409 Point McKay GD NW, Calgary, Alberta

Cliff Stevenson — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:58:14 -0600

I just sold this Condo at 409 Point McKay GD NW, Calgary, Alberta Point McKay.

View this recently sold Condo or see all my home sales

15 Discovery Ridge LN SW, Calgary, Alberta

Cliff Stevenson — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:57:55 -0600

I just sold this House at 15 Discovery Ridge LN SW, Calgary, Alberta Discovery Ridge.

View this recently sold House or see all my home sales

2234 31 AV SW, Calgary, Alberta

Cliff Stevenson — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 22:22:30 -0600

I just sold this House at 2234 31 AV SW, Calgary, Alberta Richmond Park Knobhl.

View this recently sold House or see all my home sales

Why I Love Social Media - A Story About Jeremy Roenick

Cliff Stevenson — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:41:26 -0600

If you’re a hockey fan, you already know who Jeremy Roenick is. You’ve probably seen him play in the NHL, watched him represent the USA in international hockey competitions....and you’ve probably seen him as an NHL analyst on TV.

His accomplishments as a hockey player have been significant. Jeremy is one of only 4 US born players to have scored over 500 goals in their career, and he sits #36 all time on the goal scoring list. He is also #40 in career points for his career. These are amazing accomplishments, and are just a snapshot of the success Jeremy realized in the NHL.

I’ve always liked JR. He’s been outspoken, sometimes brash, he has strong opinions, and at times he’s been in some ‘hot water’ for some of the things he has said....but you always know where he stands. He's got his haters (if you were to do a Twitter search today, you would see he’s taking flack for recent comments he’s made) - but I'm not one of them. JR was not the athlete giving 'canned' responses when he was interviewed. I loved that.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of exchanging some Tweets with JR, and what happened yesterday is a great example of why I love social media, and the tools we have today.

It started with looking at someone’s Twitter timeline, and clicking a few conversations that took me through to several Twitter profiles. Somehow, I ended up on JR’s profile. I was not following him at the time, and thought I would check out a few of the Tweets that he had sent recently.

At the top of his timeline, I saw this Tweet:

Seemed like an interesting Tweet, so I checked into the conversation that led to this post....his final response in the conversation. It started with this Tweet from a guy that was looking to win a pair of World Series tickets:

To which JR replies with:

The guy replies with his name, and then you saw JR's final response above. I hadn't read through all of the details on the conversation...just the details I could see readily in the Twitter feed. At this point I wasn't clear on the whole story, so I sent JR a message. To avoid any further "he said - then I said - then he said" explanations, I'll post the exchange in it's entirety below.

Jeremy Roenick has always had a reputation of being great with fans. If you Google his name, you'll see several references to the fact that he has always taken time out to talk with fans, sign autographs, and engage with people. Yesterday he took time out of his day (I'm sure he's a busy guy) to call a radio station for some 'random' guy on the internet, so that this guy might win World Series tickets. After that, he took time to reply to me and my inquiries on what took place.

This is why I love social media. We have access to people that we would never have had the chance to engage with just a short time ago. Our network for 'direct contact' has grown imeasurably. Reaching out to people you admire, respect, want to engage with, want to learn from, or want to help has become so easy. People invested in social media and using these tools have been provided with many very cool stories on the power of social media. I don't think this story speaks to it's power.....it's just a cool story (IMHO).

I'm a huge hockey fan....and a big fan of JR. So yeah, yesterday was kinda cool for me to have a brief exchange with someone I've cheered for over the years. But this guy....the @HockeyFollower9 guy? Tell me he's not telling this story everyday for the next year.

He's got JR to thank for that, and after reading the entire timeline after my exchange with JR, he was indeed thankful.

Very cool JR. Very cool.

Property Inspections

Cliff Stevenson — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 21:12:13 -0600

Do Your Own Due Diligence

Calgary REALTOR® Cliff Stevenson recommends you do your own due diligence when buying a home, and not take information provided by the sellers. Have YOUR OWN property inspection completed. If you have any questions or opinions on this subject, please feel free to leave comments or email Cliff at cliff@cliffstevenson.com

Cliff Stevenson here in Calgary, Alberta. If you're a buyer at the market right now and you're looking for a home and you come across into a situation where the seller has offered you to provide you with a copy of a property inspection that they just had done on the property recently, I highly recommend you don't accept that as your own due diligence.

Came across a situation here in a while ago where we were provided a property inspection and it was actually done by one of the most popular and probably one of the most reputable property inspection companies in the city. I recommend to my clients that we not use that for due diligence. We do our own property inspection. That property inspection found two very important and very costly problems with the property. One was has quite significant cost effects. The first property inspection was done a reputable property inspection company but they missed these items completely and if we got ahead and used that as our own due diligence and gone inside the property after the purchase, we would have found these items. One was actually a leak and its quite a substantial leak. So sellers, its okay for you to do this for your own information. In my opinion, you should be using this to be aware with the problems with the house prior to getting an offer on your property. Maybe fixing a few things so you're that fully prepared for one offer that comes across the table. So don't be surprised if the buyer isn't willing to accept your property inspection for their own due diligence and buyers, I highly recommend you don't.

Questions or comments, love to hear from you. You can email me at cliff@cliffstevenson.com.

Thanks and have a great day.

Permits and Home Renovations

Cliff Stevenson — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:17:53 -0600

City of Calgary Building Permits

Calgary REALTOR ® Cliff Stevenson discusses the need for building permits in the City of Calgary if you are making renovations to your home. Check out what you need before you do any renovating. If you have any questions or opinions on this subject, please feel free to leave comments or email Cliff at cliff@cliffstevenson.com

Cliff Stevenson here in Calgary, Alberta. I wanted to comment on renovations in your home in making sure you pull the proper permits.

Here in the City of Calgary, we are required to pull building permits, if we demolish, relocate, repair, alter, or make additions to an existing building or structure. Now, that on their website is pretty vague, pretty open, but I highly recommend you call the city of Calgary, the 311 line, and sure you understand what you should be pulling. I've had two transactions fall apart the last month and they both fell apart because we went in to see that the seller had not pulled the appropriate permits when they had made the renovations to the home. Some are fairly insignificant renovations, some are just rerouting electrical and plumbing, but regardless, all of that require permits and they had not pulled them. So for my buyer, to go in and do a post construction inspection, it may have been very expensive to have done and may have been very intrusive opening up walls and verifying electrical.

Please go to the City of Calgary website. They have a great pamphlet called Development and Building Permits, permit requirements for common home renovations. It will tell you exactly what you need to pull and how you can go about doing that. But don't go ahead and assume that Uncle Jim can come in and do your plumbing and electrical for you and this may not be an issue for you when you sell your home. If you can't show permits that you pulled, a buyer may walk away from your transaction.

Any questions or comments, love to hear from your. You can email me at cliff@cliffstevenson.com.
Thanks and have a great day.

A Tip for Home Sellers

Cliff Stevenson — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:56:10 -0600

Tips for Sellers

Calgary REALTOR ® Cliff Stevenson discusses recent experiences with trying to show properties to interested buyers. Sellers should make every effort to accommodate showing requests. If you have any questions or opinions on this subject, please feel free to leave comments or email Cliff at cliff@cliffstevenson.com

Cliff Stevenson here in Calgary, Alberta. Come across a situation a little too often in the last sort of a while where I've gone to book a showing for a buyer of mine whose interested in a certain property and the sellers are not allowing access to the property. Different reasons right across the board. I had somebody who has a mere posting where they were just putting a listing on MLS through an agent and took us about two weeks to get into that house. I also had somebody that was having friends over to watch a football game a little while ago and they didn't want to have any showing that time. Dinner parties, things with kids, people sick, the whole bit. There are going to be some good reasons every once in a while that the seller cannot allow access to the property in a certain time frame. I understand, with small children specially. There are things that you just cant juggle around to accommodate every buyer. But I wanted to stress the importance of trying to get everybody through your listing. If you're on the market right now, you need everybody through, as best as you can possibly accommodate them. Having friends over for a football game, not sure on putting that super high on priority list if you're on the market trying to sell your home. But just do everything you can, there's nothing saying that agent or the buyer is just going to rebook their showings to you to accommodate your schedule. It maybe a while before they can get back there and in the mean time they may have found something else. It's crucial that you get as many people through as possible during your listing period.

Questions or comments, love to hear from your. You can email me at cliff@cliffstevenson.com.

Thanks and have a great day.

New Condos In Calgary

Cliff Stevenson — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 09:41:51 -0600

Buying a New Condo in Calgary

Calgary REALTOR® Cliff Stevenson recommends that you carefully read any contract you are signing to purchase or sell real estate in Calgary. Condo developers can include clauses that allow them to change your floor-plan. If you have any questions or opinions on this subject, please feel free to leave comments or email Cliff at cliff@cliffstevenson.com

Cliff Stevenson here in Calgary Alberta. I wanted to touch briefly on purchasing brand new condos in brand new projects. Tons of them here in Calgary and a lot more on the way. But what I wanted to bring up something that I'm not sure everybody is aware of. Recently had situation where somebody wasn't aware of the terminology in the contract. A little disclaimer here, please read through everything that you are signing in a contract. It doesn't matter if it's the Alberta Real Estate Association, standard purchase or listing contract, or the builder who has a standard builder contract. Make sure you are reading through absolutely everything so you know what you're signing. Now here was a key part that became an issue from somebody I know.

"The purchaser further acknowledges and agrees that the developers shall be at liberty to make changes and hereby consents to and accepts such changes without compensation, to any of the documents described in the section, or to any other aspect of the project including without limitation to the condominium plans, re-division plans, plans of specification for the buildings, the purchasers' unit plans and specifications, the amenities and landscaping features."

The key part in here is, this kind of developer has the right to change your floor plan and specifications of your unit without providing any type of compensation. This is really important. You might walk in to a certain floor plan or be given a certain floor plan in print format and when you go in there to see how things are going, it may be different from what you actually purchased.

Please read through these contracts and make sure you understand what the issues may be as you go along this purchase journey.

Just one quick tip on purchasing a brand new condos.

Questions or comments, love to hear from you. You can email me at cliff@cliffstevenson.com.

Thanks and have a great day.

Is Your Home Clean Enough for Possession Day?

Cliff Stevenson — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:21:15 -0600

Please Clean Your Home

Calgary REALTOR® Cliff Stevenson suggests that if you are selling your home, you should leave a clean home for the buyers on their possession day. Think about how you would like to see the home if you were in the buyer's shoes. If you have any questions or opinions on this subject, please feel free to leave comments or email Cliff at cliff@cliffstevenson.com

Cliff Stevenson here in Calgary Alberta.

A tip for people selling their homes. When you're approaching possession day, make sure you're cleaning up your home and leaving your home in a state that you would want to walk in to if you were buying that home on your possession day.

Too many times I see sellers leaving homes in a really dirty condition, not clean, things laying around, garbage in the garages.

Think about the fact that somebody purchased your home, they're super excited to take possession of it. When they walk in, they want to be happy with it. I highly recommend you make sure it’s clean. Another thing, don't assume that you have some goods or some furniture or whatever the case may be, that you think that the buyer would like.

I have also seen a situation where we walked in on a possession day and there's been a large sectional couch that they thought the buyer would enjoy. Chances are...no, and chances are it has been left behind because you couldn't get it out of the house. Please, if you are selling your home, don't make an assumption that a buyer is going to appreciate something that you left behind. Just get rid of it. They've probably made their own plans, or probably measured for their own furniture.

Questions or comments, love to hear from you. You can email me at cliff@cliffstevenson.com.

Thanks and have a great day.

Is now a good time to buy?

Cliff Stevenson — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 10:24:20 -0700

Calgary REALTOR® Cliff Stevenson discusses his answer when he is asked 'is now a good time to buy?'. There might be a reason your REALTOR® is saying 'yes'. If you have any questions or opinions on this subject, please feel free to leave comments or email Cliff at cliff@cliffstevenson.com

Don't Worry About Agent Bonuses

Cliff Stevenson — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:23:44 -0700

Calgary REALTOR® Cliff Stevenson questions why a seller would offer a bonus commission to the buyer's REALTOR®. Worry about offering extras and value to the buyers. If you have any questions or opinions on this subject, please feel free to leave comments or email Cliff at cliff@cliffstevenson.com

Using the iPad in Real Estate

Cliff Stevenson — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 18:13:43 -0700

Calgary REALTOR® Cliff Stevenson explains some of the reasons that the iPad has become an integral part of his real estate business, and demonstrates how he uses it. Special thanks to Jared Chamberlain for getting me on the iPad, and his collaboration and willingness to share over the last year. If you have any questions, comments, or opinions on this subject, please feel free to leave comments or email Cliff at cliff@cliffstevenson.com

My name is Cliff Stevenson. I'm a REALTOR® at Royal LePage Foothills in Calgary Alberta and this is a short video on one of the ways I use the iPad in my real estate business.

If you're going to use the iPad in your real estate business, I highly recommend you get yourself PDF versions of the real estate contracts that your real estate board provides you with. And then get your self a good PDF editor.

In this case, I'm using PDFpen, fantastic application for the mac. I understand PDFtypewriter is the one that works very well on the PC but what you want to do is go in and enter any information that's going to be constant information in these contracts. Information that's not going to change.

So I'll just give you an example here, on these contracts for my use, my brokerage information is always going to be in here. So I'm going to include that in here and you can see I filled in some other information as well. And at the bottom here of our contract, my information is always going to be constant. So input that information into a PDF editor before you get it into an iPad. You're going to save your self a lot of time.

Can you do it in an iPad? Sure you can. But this makes it a lot easier. And save yourself copies of this PDF file that you can access through another app.

Before we begin working on the new document what we just entered information in to on the laptop, I just want to say a few things about the iPad in general. Talk about a couple of applications that I tried on this. A couple of apps that you're going to need to download if your going to subscribe to what I'm doing here.

First off, as a real estate practitioner, an Ipad is an amazing tool. But if you need convincing on that, if ever your watching this video, for me, I'm mobile with my clients information. I'm mobile with their files. I can send and receive documents quite easily. I can sign on the iPad and I'm essentially paperless. The other thing that I'm doing, trying to get creative with the iPad, if your anything like me, you take buyers out for a buyer tour of properties, you're giving them paper showing books, something maybe with the copies of the listings potentially, maybe some neighbourhood information. I'm now going to transfer that into a PDF file and give my clients an iPad. They can make notes and mark up with the listing book on their iPad. And before they even leave the vehicle, they can email themselves a copy, keeping the process totally paperless.

So on to the apps. A couple of the apps that I have tried. I think, when the iPad first came out, everybody was pretty excited with iAnnotate. iAnnotate is a fantastic app. I find to be a little more robust than I really need. There's a lot to that app, a little complicated. I wanted a simple signing up and iAnnotate didn't work very well for me. The second one was Zosh. Zosh is a great app. The problem that I had with Zosh is that it's email conveyance only. So sending files back and forth, you're doing it by email format only. And you'll see with Noterize, that's not the case.

So, two apps that you're going to need if you're going to subscribe to this. Number one, DropBox seems to be the most tightly integrated online storage application with the iPad. That's just my opinion. They offer you two gigabytes for free. As you can see, you're in DropBox for myself. I've got a bunch of files here in folders. I'm sharing a couple of these folders with my assistant, which is quite easy to do. You are able to store all the information that you've got for your clients on here. Transferring these files back and forth on computers, whether it's Mac or PC is also quite easy. So definitely get yourself DropBox. And the best app in my opinion is this Noterize. Noterize is really easy to use, really easy to manipulate. You'll see here entering in text into Noterize on a contract that we got here for our real estate association is quite easy. If you want to move this around, you can manipulate it quite easy. And a double tap takes you out of any function. So instead of filling in more text, I'll skip right down to, on our contract, the signature, which is where I think the iPad is quite useful. So point up the pen function, get your client to sign the pad and again double tap. No need to write with the stylus on these text boxes. Quite easy to do and again quite easy to manipulate. And that's the signing and entering text. And then Noterize have got a lot of use out of the way. You share documents on Noterize. As you can see from the list, quite a few options. You can email your self right away, or your client and then putting it back into DropBox in the folder that you designate, the signed copy, is pretty useful. What I'll do is just pull up a listing book, I was referring to the listing book idea. And this is how easy it is to get things into Noterize for note taking or signing of documents. Takes a couple of seconds to pull the document from my online storage. They can make notes and mark up with the listing book. The client can then just turn around and share this and email themselves a copy of the document, send it to email addresses and they've got it.

So that's how I'm using iPad for my business in real estate.

Any questions or comments, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at cliff@cliffstevenson.com.

My 5 year anniversary in Real Estate

Cliff Stevenson — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 13:12:20 -0600

It's my 5 year anniversary in real estate.

I Like For Sale By Owner Companies

Cliff Stevenson — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 09:03:41 -0600

A significant amount of attention has been given to the For Sale By Owner network of companies over the last month or so. Here in Calgary Alberta, we have several companies that will provide materials and some service to those who want to sell their property by themselves....Welist.com, Property Guys, ComFree....there are many smaller players in the FSBO market as well. All of these companies will provide you with contracts, signage, and information on how to sell your home. Recently, one of these FSBO companies in Alberta joined a group of others in forming the largest For Sale By Owner company in Canada.

Now, you might be thinking that I’m going to dismiss these companies, and talk about the virtues of working with a REALTOR®. After all, this is my blog, I’m a REALTOR®, and For Sale By Owner properties are not paying listing commissions. The same commissions that put food on my table.

You would be wrong.

I think the existence of these companies is fantastic. There are few things that I like about these companies and how they do business.

The consumer has choice. Much of what I personally do today is done after seeking information on the internet. With the wealth of information out there, there are things I find I can do myself with some research. For many people, this is the same for real estate.
They are not a threat to my business. These companies exist for people who want to control and manage everything required in the home selling process, and they offer some basic materials and send you on your way. My business offers services and experience that these networks don’t come close to providing.
They provide contrast. The existence of this business model actually helps businesses like mine stand out. You can compare what you are going to have to endure, and what the process is like selling your home by yourself, with the services that I am going to offer.
The exposure is increasing. While most of these companies are not able to provide access to the MLS for exposure, some of these FSBO sites are attracting some decent traffic and becoming more popular.

Can you sell your home by yourself? Absolutely. Can you save some money by not paying all the commissions that a REALTOR® like me is going to charge? Possibly. With these companies, and companies like them, you are enabled and empowered to attempt to save money and manage the process on your own. I think it’s great, and I don’t feel threatened at all.

So try it. You’ve heard success stories from those that have sold their homes on their own. Maybe it will work for you.

......but if you have any difficulty with the sales process on your own, I would be happy to talk to you and explain how I might be able to help.

Homes for sale in Copperfield.

Cliff Stevenson — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:44:37 -0600

Showing homes for sale in Copperfield today.

Predicting the Future

Cliff Stevenson — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:37:30 -0600

Calgary REALTOR® Cliff Stevenson cannot predict the future in real estate

Calgary REALTOR® Cliff Stevenson explains that given our global economic turmoil in the last few years, it is extremely difficult to assess where our real estate market is headed. This last five years have been years of constantly updated forecasts! If you have any questions or opinions on this subject, please feel free to leave comments or email Cliff at cliff@cliffstevenson.com

Cliff Stevenson here in Calgary Alberta.

Got a lot of questions from people. People I have worked with in the past. People that are just sort of stopping by the office that want to talk about where we're headed in the market, in the housing market. What's going to happen in the next twelve, twenty four or thirty six months? What are some of the things that we're seeing in the market? And I'm going to tell you that I see my job as being someone who helps people buy homes and somebody who markets properties.

Coming up with what is coming down the pipe in the market is really difficult. I mean, dating back to the fall of 2005, if you look back statistically, we basically had an anomaly, an anomaly-type year, every year, for completely different reasons. So it's really difficult to sit down and say with any kind of certainty, especially with what the economy's done globally over the last couple of years...where we're headed, what's the market is going to look like in the next little bit, and what buyers and sellers are going to expect to see. We're all looking at the same statistics and we're all looking at the same information but there are lot of things that have happened in the last few years that I don't think anybody, even looking at those statistics, could have told you.

So if you want to call and chat about the market, I'm happy to discuss it with you. I'm happy to talk numbers, facts, stats, you name it. But I'm very reluctant to make any kind of bold forecast on what I see happening on the market. I just think that there are many things that are uncertain right now on our global economy.

Question or comments? Would love to hear from you. You can e-mail me at cliff@cliffstevenson.com.

Thanks and have a great day.

Homes in Scarboro

Cliff Stevenson — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:10:00 -0600

Showing homes in Scarboro. Such a great location in YYC.

Acreages in Sharp Hill

Cliff Stevenson — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:30:53 -0600

Out looking at Sharp Hill acreages just outside Calgary.