Do your eyes glaze over when you are faced with pages of information, charts and graphs? I have simplified the comparison between mortgage-lender insurance and personally-owned mortgage insurance.

The 5 top design plans for Lansdowne Park have just been released from the city. Five bold plans all have a focus on the Aberdeen Pavilion ( Cattle Castle ) from green houses inside of it and housing the Ottawa Farmer's Market to bringing the waters of the canal right to it's door.

Members of the Ottawa Real Estate Board sold 1841 residential properties in April through the board's Multiple Listing ServiceR system compared with 1591 in April 2009.  That represents and increase of 15.7 percent.  Those numbers blew away the record for April which is always one of the busiest months of the year.
Four hundred and twenty-five of those sales were in the condominium property class while the rest were in the residential property class.
The average sale price of condominiums was $254,220 an increase of 17.4 percet over April 2009.  The average sale price of residential properties was $356,617 and increase of 11.7 percent over April 2009.

As the process of getting builing permits for renovations in Ottawa gets ever more involved and tedious, I thought you might enjoy this story that happened in the US.

This is an actual letter sent to a man named Ryan DeVries regarding a pond on his property. It was sent by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Quality, State of Pennsylvania . This guy's response is hilarious, but read The State's letter before you get to the response letter.

Info received from Mike Hatch of Ottawa's Home team at www.ottawashometeam.com

Good news!

Just in case you haven't yet heard, Monday, for the first time in a while the mortgage rates from some of the big banks has started to creep up.  The spread between bond yields and fixed mortgage rates is such that only desire for market share has kept the banks from raising rates to date.
 
Yesterday morning RBC (Royal Bank)  and TDCT (TD-Canada Trust) announced a .60% increase in their 5 year posted rate, it will be only a matter of time before others follow suit. It's a sign that interest rates are probably on the upswing as has been predicted for quite a while. 
 

March 5, 2010 : A Great Start to 2010 for Ottawa’s Housing Market

Members of the Ottawa Real Estate Board sold 1,118 residential properties in February through the Board’s Multiple Listing Service® system compared with 787 in February 2009, an increase of 42.1 per cent.

Of those sales, 323 were in the condominium property class, while 795 were in the residential property class. The condominium property class includes any property, regardless of style (i.e. detached, semi-detached, apartment, stacked etc.) which is registered as a condominium, as well as properties which are co-operatives, life leases and timeshares. The residential property class includes all other residential properties.

It is often said that the quality of life in a community has a good relationship to the number of artists that live there. This interesting study provides insight into Ottawa's arts community.
 
Ottawa – More than one-third of Canada’s artists (53,500) live in five of the largest cities according to a report released today. Based on 2006 data, the report ranks Ottawa fifth for number of artists (4,600) behind Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary. Arts research firm Hill Strategies carried out the study, which identifies neighbourhoods with the largest concentration of artists and highlights their income and education against local labour force data.

The Honourable Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance, today announced a number of measured steps to support the long-term stability of Canada's housing market and continue to encourage home ownership for Canadians.

"Canada's housing market is healthy, stable and supported by our country's solid economic fundamentals," said Minister Flaherty. "However, a key lesson of the global financial crisis is that early policy action can help prevent negative trends from developing."

The Government will therefore adjust the rules for government-backed insured mortgages as follows: