Just a note to update everyone… thanks to all of you who dropped off your yard sale items we sold almost a garage full of eclectic items ranging from kid’s dolls to an antique Singer sewing machine table.

Total earned this year – $634 to help with the search for a cure for breast cancer!

Yard Sale For The Cure @ Toronto’s Real Estate Team Office Went Well is a post from: Toronto Real Estate Updates

The current owner of the Yonge and Eglinton Square wants to build a three-storey shopping mall on the current public space and the North York Community Council has almost unanimously decided to give them the go-ahead, pulling the plug on the square at just 42 years of age. 

That current owner is RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust, and along with the new three-storey retail building the new construction will also add five new levels to the office tower at 20 Eglinton Ave. West, and seven levels to the existing office tower at 2300 Yonge St. Pedestrian connections from these two streets to Duplex Avenue and Orchard Heights Boulevard are also set to be improved.  

New 3-Storey Podium Will Add Character To The NW Corner

The community made their voices heard with regards to wanting to square to stay intact. A city staff report said, “the design changes presented by the applicant were not well received by the community,” but pointing out that the land “offers a significant opportunity to be a programmable space,” as reported in the National Post last week. 

Before RioCan bought the square in 2007, the developer who bought the public street area in 1968 was permitted to build two office towers and residences, and the bylaw that passed in that same year allowed the towers but exempted the area that is now the square from any large buildings.  

Some community residents are upset about losing the bit of space they have, and some worry that the taller buildings that might overshadow their homes.  Personally, I think some change is long overdue.  For the most part, the square has been a barren, cold area for half the year and just a crossing point for the rest of the time.

Former Toronto mayor David Crombie, who has lived in the area for quite some time, agrees and called the current square “an inhospitable place” and said that the new development “will help fix it”.  

Eglinton-Lawrence Councillor Karen Stintz told InsideToronto after a community meeting on the subject that there’s be little hope of finding something that would please everyone, and that the square as it currently stands is under-used and is not an ideal community zone.  

The proposed development, which was approved last Tuesday, will add 40,000 square feet within the three new storeys and promises to feature “contemporary and innovative” designs.

A part of the current pedestrian square will be enclosed, and RioCan said that the community will only be losing less than 10 per cent of their current public space, but an outdoor green space and rooftop terrace will be open to the public on the third floor of the new building.

Toronto Approves New Yonge And Eglinton Square Development Proposal is a post from: Toronto Real Estate Updates

A part of our company’s business philosophy is to give back to our community in which we live.  One of the ways we do this is through our annual RE/MAX Hallmark Scholarship Program.

Each year the sum of $10,000 is awarded to a number of university aged children of present and past clients of RE/MAX Hallmark Realtors.

We are now accepting applications for the 2010 Fall Semester.  The deadline for application submission is March 31st, 2010.

Please click on the links below to see the program criteria and to download a scholarship application form.

If you’re one of our present or past clients (going back to 1983 ), we encourage you to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to assist you with your children’s future.

Click here to look at the scholarship criteria.

Click here to download the scholarship application.

RE/MAX Scholarship Fund Helps Toronto Real Estate Team Clients is a post from: Toronto Real Estate Updates

Every once in a while we run into someone who says “I am going to wait for prices to drop”.

Last year one of our 2002 Buyer Workshop graduates called us to inquire about how the market was.

We told him the market was at the bottom and now was the time he had been waiting for.

Unfortunately, he did nothing!

Here’s what happened to one of our buyers who DID do something…

Here’s proof that renting in Toronto is better than buying… NOT! is a post from: Toronto Real Estate Updates

At this week’s 2-day RE/MAX Ontario-Atlantic Canada rally, there were three great speakers to educate everyone PLUS there were several special children in attendance.

These kids were awarded ‘medals of bravery’ for the surgeries that the Sick Kids Hospital has had to perform on them to save their lives.

Our Toronto’s Real Estate Team – Thomas & Sally Cook Plus has contributed many $thousands over the years to this cause as well as to the Search For A Cure program to find a cure for breast cancer.

RE/MAX internationally will reach $100 million in donations in 2010 and agents from across Canada have contributed almost $40 million dollars in support of our local Children’s Miracle Network hospitals.

Take a look at the awards ceremony… up on the screen they showed the types of treatments these kids endured.  Very brave!!

To find out more about the program, go to www.ChildrensMiracleNetwork.ca .

RE/MAX In Toronto Supports The Children’s Miracle Network is a post from: Toronto Real Estate Updates

Just recently I attended the National Association of Realtors (NAR) convention in San Diego. If you have never been to San Diego, I highly recommend it.

I stayed in a hotel which was created from a bank building built in 1926 in the heart of the Gastown District… an area of 1880-1930 structures which has now developed into an exciting area of restaurants and patios.

The convention started off on Thursday with an all-day brainstorming (8 am to 5 pm) between about 40 of the top real estate agents from across the USA (and one other Canadian besides myself). Because noone is from a competing area, there’s a free exchange of the best ideas Realtors are using to grow their businesses.

Friday I drove up to the Rancho Santa Fe area just north of San Diego for a video interview with Joe Stumpf from By Referral Only. Joe has been a mentor for Sally and I and our Team since 1993. It was interesting to see his broadcast centre and participate with him in his training of Realtors continent-wide.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday were spent attending classes all day, each day with dinners with fellow agents each evening – a terrific opportunity to learn more and see what trends are coming.

The Americans are still suffering badly from the real estate downturn. Many classes (which I didn’t need to attend) were on how to manage Short Sales – situations where the seller has less equity in his home than the amount of the mortgage.

One agent I spoke with from Northern California had 1 in 8 homes in his community currently under foreclosure! He said property values were back to those of the early 1990s. This decrease in value has actually caused them to be back into having many multiple offer situations ironically.

I spent several hours late Monday afternoon and evening sitting in a Gaslamp Starbucks assembling my notes and prioritizing what exciting things I could bring home to our Team and to our Toronto real estate clients.

San Diego, Like Toronto, Has Some Beautiful Turn-Of-The-Century Buildings is a post from: Toronto Real Estate Updates

Emily and Steven were outgrowing their condo near Mount Pleasant and Eglinton and looking to purchase a house.

David Stoddard, one of the buyer specialists on our Team received a call from Emily looking for some real estate counsel and advice. David suggested that the best way to start would be to personally meet with him for a 90-minute buyer consultation at our Team office so he could better learn about their personal situation.

The clients we work with really enjoy learning about the home buying process and having a foundation for their home search which ultimately saves them a lot of time and effort.

With a Wish List of “would likes” and “must haves” determined for their new home, a price range set, a few favourite neighbourhoods selected and some MLS listings in hand they were off .

As the weeks progressed one home stood out from the showings . It was a gorgeous new home that a builder had designed and built in west Toronto . It had all the characteristics that Emily and Steven were looking for.

An offer was presented and a price and the terms were agreed upon. Now the fun began.

Two days before closing it was determined through the title search that there were liens against the registered owner of the property. Upon further investigation it was found that the Seller’s original lawyer had registered the wrong name on title when the seller had purchased the property. The seller’s lawyer was now unavailable to fix the problem.

To make matters worse the person who should have been on title was out of the country on holiday. So not only did the seller not have a lawyer to fix the problem the real registered owner of the property was unavailable to prove in person that the person currently registered on title was not him. Wow! What a mess!

To say the least both Emily and Steven were feeling the stress ( big time!) and they were quite sure they were going to lose the house. The good news for both of them was that they were using a Team lawyer who had many years of experience . The closing was going to be delayed nevertheless.

The real registered owner of the property had to fly back to Canada and present himself to a lawyer to swear that he was not the actual person registered on title. Then the seller had to find a new lawyer with experience in this type of title mess to clear the title to the property. The clock was ticking.

The house finally closed one week late. A buyer credit for the delay was negotiated with the seller and Emily and Steven could now move into their dream home. The moral of this story is to NOT hire a real estate lawyer without experience just to save a few bucks.

The same goes with a home inspector or a mortgage specialist. Anything can happen along the way to your closing day and it is the experience of your Agent and your service providers that is going to guide you through any turbulence.

Home Buyers Need A Good Team On Their Side When Purchasing A Home In Toronto is a post from: Toronto Real Estate Updates

Things are really coming together for our Team this year after the scary way 2008 ended. From television to client service awards and Team standings, all are coming up roses.

Sally Cook in The Agents on W Network

Thirty-five Toronto buyers and sellers chose us to represent them in the month of May… a terrific testimonial to our Team’s belief in providing excellent representation and counselling to our clients.

Sally had the privilege of being chosen as one of the ‘pro’ agents on this years “The Agents” TV series. It’s showing on the W Network Monday evenings at 10 pm. Go to www.WNetwork.com/theagents to see some of the trailers.

RE/MAX Ontario had a Platinum Members Only presentation on Thursday of this past week in downtown Toronto and Sally was asked to be one of the Pro-Agent panelists along with other Realtors from Toronto, Ottawa and St John’s, Newfoundland.

RE/MAX Circle Of Legends Award Received By Thomas

In March of this year, RE/MAX International presented me with the Circle Of Legends award.

This is given to RE/MAX agents who have helped approximately 1,500 home buyers or sellers in their real estate career.

It’s been a terrific journey starting in 1980 and transitioning in and out of several recessions and boom markets along the way.

And finally, the statistics are in for RE/MAX Team standings in Canada for the month of April 2009.

Our Toronto’s Real Estate Team was ranked # 21 in Canada, #6 in Ontario and #2 in Toronto out of over 15,000 RE/MAX Realtors nationwide. See the full report HERE.

Thanks go out to our terrific clients for their continued loyalty and support, especially in the past several years… please keep those referrals coming

RE/MAX Honours For Toronto’s Real Estate Team is a post from: Toronto Real Estate Updates

I don’t know about you but I find rugby very mysterious. I never played it in high school (we were into the regular style of football complete with cheerleaders – I played right guard and fullback – Renfrew Collegiate rah, rah, rah) but now that Rylie is playing I’ve learned almost all of the rules.

Rylie just finished Grade 11 at Royal St Georges this year and he absolutely loves rugby. He actually loves the tackling without any pads or helmet – go figure

The school senior rugby team had a great year and ended up playing their championship game at Lakefield College in Lakefield, just north of Peterborough.

Take a look at some of the game highlights. It was an exciting game and the cameraderie at game’s end was fantastic to watch.

Rylie’s School Wins Their Rugby Championship This Spring is a post from: Toronto Real Estate Updates

The newest reality series to hit the air waves premiers Monday April 27th at 10 PM on the W Network. It stars 8 Toronto Realtors… some of them rookies and some of them pros.

Here’s what the Vancouver Sun had to say in a recent article on the front page of their Homes section…

“The power of television, whether to entertain, provoke or simply captivate, is irrefutable.

It can transform the interesting into the dull, the pedestrian into the fascinating, and the tyro into the torch-bearer.

Reality shows, for instance, create household names out of the truly untalented. Witness Kim Kardashian.

News commentators, society’s arbiters, can make or break an ego. Just ask Sarah Palin.

And specialty cable channels, proliferating like bunnies during Passover, have created a seemingly unquenchable appetite for what can only be dubbed the new porn, parading not the flesh of humans but the tantalizing promise of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of the ordinary, be they parents of 18 kids, foul-mouthed British chefs or tattooed bad boys who build motorcycles.

Nowhere is this modern-day porn more addictive than on the home front.

It would be easy to blame paint-chip maven Debbie Travis and her Montreal-based production company, Whalley-Abbey Media, for our new-found craving, having first tempted our taste buds, way back when, with her popular Painted House series.

Travis has since dominated the home and garden TV landscape, with shows like Facelift, From The Ground Up, Buy Me, Property Shop and Income Property, an impressive lineup complemented by dozens of other shows drawing huge audiences all over the dial, shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Mansions, This Old House, Home Heist, Flip this House, Moving Up, Pure Design, Sarah’s House, My First Home, Property Ladder, Trading Spaces, Dream Home and House Hunters.

Not only do we seem to care deeply about what’s going on inside a stranger’s house – be it restoring or renovating, decorating or designing – we clearly care just as much about the transaction that got us there.

No surprise, really, especially not in Canada, where a big-city house can cost as much as a small jet.

And so we have made reality stars of Brad Lamb, the big, bald, blustery Toronto realtor in Big City Broker.

And of Tatiana Londono, all huge hair and ambition, in The Property Shop, and Sandra Rinomato, seasoned and reasoned, in Property Virgins, and the charmingly patient Sofie Allsopp of The Unsellables.

They are peddling the Canadian dream, home ownership, and we can’t take our eyes off them.

Sally Cook is one of the Pros on the TV series "The Agents"

Enter Sally Cook.

She is one of eight Toronto realtors (all but one are women) on a new W Network show called The Agents, which premieres April 27.

The show, she says, though not really sure what is means either, is a “docu-soap,” because “it’s not about the home, it’s not about the buyer.”

Instead, it’s about working real estate agents in Toronto, and each episode profiles two – one rookie and one pro – as they deal with the roller-coaster housing market, antsy clients, and their busy personal lives.

The first episode features Janice Rushford, a 36-year-old rookie with big hair and blue jeans who is selling a house left in an estate while juggling a new relationship (with her boss!) and single motherhood.

The pro is Cook, trim and polished at 55, a mother and grandmother and transplanted Brit who works with her Realtor husband Thomas.

Cook, a long-time mortgage broker, decided to get her real estate licence when, during the 1980s boom, “I saw so many people get hurt by, I hate to say it, unscrupulous agents.”

In episode one, filmed a year ago, Cook is looking for a condo for a client while overseeing the construction of her 4,000-square-foot lakeside vacation home.

So what’s the show’s attraction?

“I asked the same question,” says Cook. “Why would you want to do a show about real agents? They said: ‘It’s a lot of people’s dream job.’”

4 Rookies And 4 Pros Show How It's Done In Toronto

Maybe, but Cook says she’s appalled by some real estate shows, like the Los-Angeles based Million-Dollar Listing, which focus on the glitz and glamour and the young guns of the trade, when, in fact, there are both lean times and immense disappointments in the industry.

“There is a massive failure in this business, and to be successful you have to find a balance.

“I think we’re the average agents doing the average job in an average life in a big city.

“People think when you get into real estate, it’s going to be big bucks and no work. So this is their insight. It’s hard work.”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

“The Agents” TV Reality Show Features Toronto Real Estate Agents In ‘Real Life’ Circumstances is a post from: Toronto Real Estate Updates