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I predict that the price of houses in towns and cities that are within one to two hours of Toronto will skyrocket in value over the next two years, outpacing the average price appreciation for all residential real estate in Ontario. There are three reasons I make this prediction. First, with the onset of COVID, a lot of employers have been forced to permit their employees to work from home. This is a trend that is here to stay. Even bankers and lawyers are working from home. That flexibility and the concept that you may only need to attend the office in person two to three days a week removes the need for people to live in or near the big city. Commuting a few days a week is not as onerous as commuting every single weekday. This provides flexibility and opens up a much larger radius around the city for purchasing a home. The smaller towns are far more affordable than Toronto. A colleague of mine recently bought a brand new home in Bracebridge for less than $500,000. That is an attractive metric for many people who currently live in the city.  Second, there are so many condominium dwellers and apartment dwellers who are sick of waiting 45 minutes or more for the elevator due to social distancing. They are also tired of heading up and down the emergency exit stairs trying to keep their distance. They are desperate to breathe the fresh air and spend some time outdoors given the state of emergency orders that have been in place. Many condominiums and apartments have no outdoor space. Those feelings of having been cooped up in a box will drive many of those condominium owners to sell their condominiums and purchase houses that they can afford…and those affordable communities are typically at least an hour outside of Toronto and often as far away as two hours away.  Macleans photo Finally, the price of houses in the city of Toronto remains incredibly high. The prices are completely unaffordable for most families. Anyone coming into the city from elsewhere in Canada cannot afford to buy in Toronto. That lack of access to affordable houses in the city will drive people who want a backyard and their own house further and further outside of the city limits.
Those three trends support my prediction that homes in the surrounding communities within one to two hours of Toronto will skyrocket over the next two years. We’ll see if the prediction comes to fruition.
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It makes me happy when my house is clean. This is not a common occurrence. Perhaps I can blame part of that on the fact that I have four young children, Nonetheless, on the rare occasions that all of us have picked up our items and the kitchen is clean and the floors are swept, the house feels really good. It is similar with a commercial building. At my family's building in Muskoka, we have a cleaning machine that mimics a zamboni at an ice rink. It wets and scrubs the industrial floor to clean it and after a cleaning the warehouse floors come close to shining. We try to clean the warehouse floor at least once a week. We also pay for a cleaning lady to clean the common areas of the building, including the hallways and bathrooms, at least once a week to ensure that the office space remains free of dirt and tidy. Our tenants appreciate working in a clean, organized building and most of the time we are proud of how the building looks. In my view it is a good idea to always keep control of the cleaning for your building. Some landlords farm that responsibility out to tenants, and that is fine as it relates to tenant's own areas but any areas that are common should be controlled by the landlord in my opinion. It is the landlord's building and it is in the landlord's interest that the building always show as well as possible. Cleaning is a relatively minor expense in the grand scheme of things but a clean building sends a clear message that a landlord cares about his or her property. A clean work environment enhances everyone's enjoyment of the space.  |
Norma WaltonEntrepreneur and mom to four amazing kids New Day
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July 2021
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