The Home Tribe Real Estate Blog

Edmonton Home Buying: Helping Your Children Plan For A Move

As a new parent, I have become more acutely aware of my son’s needs as he continues to grow and develop. Through this process and talking to some of my prospective buyers it has become more apparent that talking about how moving impacts one’s children is an important conversation to have. As an Edmonton REALTOR, I also feel it is my job to provide sound advice to my clients about how they can help their children transition from the “buying a home” phase to the “moving in” process.

As every child is unique, the way they take the news of moving will vary. Some kids will be excited, while others will be worried and feel that their whole world is changing. Not all kids are good with change, so discussing the possibility of moving ahead of time is key. Be sure to chat about the concept of moving and what it means as a family. Talk about all the exciting benefits of moving, stress that their “stuff” will be coming with them and how not only can they make new friends, but how you’ll maintain existing friendships.

It is important to recognize that some children will want to be a part of the whole process, especially as they get older, while others may be better off being part of certain aspects of the move.

There are some great books to introduce children to the concept of moving including: Big Ernie’s New Home, Louis & Bobo: We Are Moving, The Berenstain Bears’: Moving Day, My Very Exciting, Sort Scary, Big Move.

Receive A Complimentary Book On Moving For Your Kids:

Researching & Finding Your Next Edmonton Home: Talk to our TruHome team about how we can help make your next move smoother and better.

Come home to this outstanding half duplex condo located in Blackburne Pointe. Space exceeds expectations, making it perfect for those who love to entertain, yet still provides a warm, cozy feeling.  Upon entrance, you are greeted with expansive vaulted ceilings that lead towards the open concept kitchen with pantry, oak cabinets and flooring throughout the main level.  The upstairs features 3 bedrooms, including a master bedroom with a walk-in closet and three-piece bath.  The fully finished basement has been professionally designed to the same quality as the upstairs including a living room, bathroom and guest bedroom. Located in the lovely community of Blackburne you will also enjoy a great array of nearby amenities. This community is known for its outstanding natural beauty. There are several expansive public parks in the area that are very popular with outdoor enthusiasts, nature lovers and children. Recreational activities in the community of Blackburne include walking and biking along the pathways, while there are also playing fields for those who want to play sports. The residential side streets wind the neighbourhood, making it a quiet place to live.

This beautiful home won’t last long, contact your TruHome team today!

There are various benefits to choosing the neighbourhood of Parkdale as your home when it comes to this 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom condo.  This 942 sqft. unit has been nicely painted with high quality laminate wood flooring and the main bathroom features a stand-up shower and a soaker bath. It’s located a short distance north of the downtown core and located just to the south of the neighbourhood is Commonwealth Stadium (perfect for Edmonton Eskimo fans AND all within walking distance !).Only minutes away you can benefit from the close proximity to Save on Foods, McDonalds, Subway, schools, and many other businesses and services.  Explore the community of Parkdale and see other listings here!

If you’ve been waiting for an exceptional value in Parkwood, here it is!  Talk to the TruHome Team today!

Over the last week, we have spoken with a few of our mortgage specialists to gain a better understanding of how the mortgage changes may affect you.   Due to the updates, a homebuyer may not qualify for as high of a mortgage as they previously could.

Now “the average home buyer will have to pass a financial stress test and qualify for the 4.64% interest rate which is about 2% over the rate they are qualifying for right now.” Suzette Hawkes from RBC explains that “this test measures whether the buyer can still afford to make payments if the mortgage rates rose to the Bank of Canada’s posted five-year fixed mortgage rate. In some cases, this means homebuyers will be able to spend $20,000.00 less on a home that they were originally pre-approved for on a prior date.”

Homebuyers that are applying for a conventional mortgage with 20% or more down will not be affected by this change.  For the home buyers that require an insured mortgage (less than 20% down) will have to go through this process.

Our recommendation: be sure to talk to a mortgage specialist to learn more about your current buying power.

How many violations does an Edmonton restaurant need to receive for you to stop going there, or do you even care?

In our province, Alberta Health Services is in charge of monitoring and regulating restaurants to ensure they comply with the public health legislation and standards in Alberta.

While each restaurants violations are tracked online at www.restaurantinspections.ca, it is unlikely that you as a consumer are visiting this website prior to go out to eat each time. More than likely, you probably have never even visited it.

At present time, we often do not consider the risks involved with eating out and that these risks may be far greater at certain establishments then others. How risky is eating out? Are certain restaurants worse or better? Or more so, do I even want to know? Perhaps, ignorance is bliss…until one day, your kneeling over the toilet bowl experiencing a terrible case of food poisoning.

According to a recent poll by Open Data Edmonton, 43% of people do want better access to the Restaurant Inspection data. This indicates that access to this type of data is important to the public.

At TruHome, we are all about enhancing our clients (and the people of YEG) lifestyle through more open and transparent data. We also, just happen to be curious folks who ask a lot questions…..which is why we couldn’t wait to get our hands on the restaurant inspection data.

Through Alberta Health Services, restaurants may encounter 4 different types of inspections:

• Initial / Approval – an inspection performed before a restaurant opens or if there is a new owner to determine if the facility will be able to prepare food safely and complies with applicable legislation.
• Monitoring / Routine – an inspection performed without notice to ensure food is being handled safely and complies with applicable legislation. Restaurants usually have 1 to 3 monitoring inspections per year.
• Risk Management / Re-inspection – an inspection performed to ensure that unsafe practices and violations noted in previous inspections have been corrected.
• Demand / Complaint – an inspection performed to follow up on complaints from the public or another agency alleging an unsafe condition or violation.

In our Edmonton Restaurant Inspection visualization, we felt that critical violations would be the most important measure for #yegfoodies, as this really touches on public safety concerns. Through our visualization, we soon discovered that while some Edmonton restaurants had virtually no violations, others obtained over 53 in the last 3 years alone (2014-2016).

According to the AHS:

Monitoring inspections are conducted unannounced and are considered “complete” inspections, meaning the inspection involves Environmental Health Officers observing and documenting compliance under fifteen categories:

1. General Sanitation/Structure
2. Water Supply – Public or private supply
3. Sewage System – Public or private
4. Food Handling Practices
5. Cold Food Storage/Display
6. Hot Food Storage/Display
7. Staff Hygiene
8. Equipment and Utensils (Condition/Storage/Display)
9. Dishwashing Equipment
10. Washroom (Public & Staff)
11. Dry Goods Storage
12. Pest Infestation/Control
13. Safe Food Certification
14. Sanitation Procedures/Pest Control Record
15. Valid Food Handlers Permit

It makes us wonder, will the knowledge of the number of violations a restaurant has received impact your decision to eat there? Or more importantly, is there a better way that the province or the city of Edmonton can communicate a restaurants track record more openly to the publicly?

The city of Toronto has taken significant steps to making their inspections more transparent. The Toronto DineSafe program grades each restaurant through a colour coded system:

• Green for Pass
• Yellow for Conditional Pass
• Red for Closed

These grades are required to be visibly posted at each restaurant. Since, implementing this program, Toronto went from 78.2% of restaurants passing to 92.4% by the end of 2012. According to the Food Service Packaging Institute: “In 2010 DineSafe won the Samuel J. Crumbine Consumer Protection Award for providing outstanding food protection services – the first time an organization outside the United States has won this prestigious award.”

Based on this, it does show a direct correlation of how accessible data has improved the quality of the restaurant industry in Toronto.

Can Alberta restaurants improve and reduce the number of violations? How can, we as a province move forward and be recognized as a leader in this capacity?

At TruHome, we believe in opening up the data, but, more specifically on the how the data is communicated to the public. How do you think Restaurant Inspection data should be displayed (online or off)?

Callingwood Condo Priced to Sell at: $199, 900

There are various benefits to choosing the neighbourhood of Callingwood as your home when it comes to this 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo. Freshly painted and boasting over 998 sq ft, this condo in Mainstreet West is located close to major routes including the Whitemud freeway and the Anthony Henday. Explore the neighbourhood with your family at the ever popular weekly farmers market that has been operating for over 32 years. Only a few minutes away you can benefit from the close proximity to grocery stores, schools, daycares and many other businesses and services.  Explore the community of Callingwood and listings here.

If you’ve been waiting for an exceptional value in Callingwood, here it is! Talk to the TruHome Team today!

What Is Happening In Your Area – Stats Wise?

Interested to understand what has happened in the Edmonton Real Estate market last month? Check out our most recent stats pertaining to the communities of Oliver and Downtown. Don’t live in the core? Contact us to get updated on what’s happening in your hood.

Author: Trevor Prentice

It was always our intention to be involved in our community in some way once our family settled down.  In fact, an active community was one of the things we were looking for when deciding where in the city to live.  The neighbourhood we have since moved to has an official community league that manages a community hall, ice rink, sports, runs events throughout the year, and a number of other projects.  This, and a recent conversation with a co-worker who lives in a newer neighbourhood in the city, has led me to wonder which neighbourhoods in the city have official community leagues, and how new leagues are created.

The Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues website informed me that there are apparently 157 community leagues in Edmonton!  Given how many people are involved in keeping my league running relatively smoothly, it’s hard to imagine how many people are working (primarily as volunteers, in my understanding) all over the city to make our communities better places to live!

157 community leagues is pretty great, but the 2014 census showed 239 neighbourhoods in Edmonton with over 1000 people living in them.  Many people must live in areas without these great opportunities to get to know their neighbours, interface directly with city officials, and create and take advantage of extra facilities, at least in the capacity of a community league.

If you are in such a situation, where you live in a neighbourhood that has yet to establish an official community league, you may be interested to know that the city offers a $5000 Emerging Community League Grant to help get things started.  Additionally, on an annual basis, community leagues in Edmonton are eligible for an Operating Grant from the city, the amount of which is based partially on the size of the neighbourhood.

An even easier way to get started, to test the waters, and to generate some interest in a new community, is to plan and host a “block party”.  With the city’s permission, a street, park, or back alley can be closed off for you and your neighbours to have a BBQ or other event.  The City of Edmonton website has lots of information and advice on getting started.

So get involved and take some initiative; build or help grow a community, your neighbours may be cooler than you think!

Hello Edmonton Real Estate – What Is Going On? (A Recap From June)

• 1,785 properties were sold in the Edmonton Census Metropolitan Area (up 0.8% from May)
• 1,117 single family detached homes were sold in the Edmonton CMA (equal percentage from May)
• 465 condos and 173 duplex/rowhouses sold (up 11.5% and down 15% from May, respectively)
• $435,366 was the average all-residential price for June (down by over 1% from May)

“Although June’s residential unit sales are up slightly over May, we did not see the numbers set in June of 2015. Also notable is that the sustained lull in sales we have seen over the past two years has not been reflected in average price. Continued sales of higher priced properties in the region have helped keep average prices strong,” says REALTORS® Association of Edmonton Chair Steve Sedgwick.

What Is Happening In Your Area – Stats Wise?

We are excited to annouce that we are now launching monthly stats based on region. Central Edmonton Dwellers (Downtown & Oliver) – check out your stats below. Don’t live in the core? Contact us to get updated on what’s happening in your hood.

Earlier this month, the TruHome team was honoured to be included in discussing how entrepreneurship and job growth are paramount to the success of building up the Alberta economy. By the government funding organizations like TEC Edmonton, you will see greater mentorship and small business growth, which will in turn help propel our economy forward. 

As part of this celebration, our team was invited to speak about the work TEC Edmonton did with us and meet the Minister of Economic Development and Trade, Deron Bilous. It was a crazy week, as not only were we participating in this, but I (Elisse) personally, just celebrated the birth of my son, Harrison, who got to partake in this journey at 5 days old.

Entreprenur and TEC client Elisse Moreno said her experience with the incubator backs up the encouraging statistics in the report. She’s the founder of TruHome (formerly HomeTribe), a technology-based startup that uses data and analytics to help match homebuyers with suitable properties.

“We worked with other consulting companies and we felt like we were sometimes a number,” she said. “Here, we came in the first day and met with almost everyone in TEC Edmonton and they listened to our story. … They’re on board, so you build confidence and you feel better about everything.”

But Moreno said startups in Alberta still face major hurdles. “It’s funding and mentorship that are the two things that we’re facing.”

• read more at The Edmonton Journal