Vern McClelland's (mccl) Blog

Buyer Beware Usually this time of year Realtors start receiving phone calls from first time home owners experiencing water seepage in their basement.  Here is my view - basements and window wells are holes in the ground so we shouldn't be surprised that water will flow to the lowest point, theref...

Once Upon a Time The Canadian Real Estate Association and the Competition Bureau of Canada are at each other's throats right now over the issue of access to the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) system.  There has been lots of press about the issue and I have received a number of inquiries from frie...

Value is determined by who is looking  The call came from out of province.  The seller wanted to list an old farmyard of approximately five acres.  She said although it had been in her family for almost a hundred years it was time to sell; there was no one left locally who would care.  Would I mi...

Spring Madness  On our recent vacation in Florida, we had a day to kill in the Tampa Bay area, so for the first time we attended a race meet at a major thoroughbred track.  It was a fun way to spend an afternoon, even if we really had no clue about the individual qualities of the horses, their jo...

When is a Contract a Contract? A contract is a legally binding agreement between two or more capable persons, for consideration or value, to do or not to do, some lawful and genuinely intended act.  Certain essential elements must be present to make a contract enforceable.  For example, the parti...

Thankful To Live Here My wife and I caught a seat sale to Florida in February, hoping to get out of the cold for a while and explore an area of North America we hadn't seen before.  As a winter vacation, it was a good news / bad news scenario.  We traveled much of the central and southern part of...

Conditional Offers Most offers on real estate contain conditions that provide support to the buyer's decision making process and due diligence on the property.  Subject to achieving financing by a certain date.  Fairly straightforward with two aspects - the buyer's ability to service the debt, an...

When You Don't Need a Realtor  Most people outside the profession of Realtor think we earn our living selling real estate.  I believe successful Realtors are facilitators and problem solvers; we assist sellers and buyers, landlords and tenants, to connect in a business like way with each other.  ...

Demographic Trends That Will Influence Real Estate A college professor once said at a conference I attended that if you want to predict the future, seek to acknowledge the past and understand the present.  This particularly applies to changes in population within our region and the country as a w...

Don't Try This at Home!  I thought we would lighten up the column a bit this week, and share a few anecdotes from our day to day lives as Realtors.  The following are true stories, and remember we are professionals, so please don't do this in your home! Members of the Group often work with famili...