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The Chase: one couple’s search for suburban comforts in the urban wilds

By Bert Archer

The Buyers: Karie Whetter, a 32-year-old marketing account director, and Paul Cussons, a 35-year-old account executive.

The Story: Whetter and Cussons met and started dating in mid-2010. The relationship quickly flourished, and just over a year later they were already talking about moving in together. Renting was out of the question—they had each been saving for a down payment before they met, and so they decided to pool their resources and take the ownership plunge together. Whetter and Cussons both worked in Mississauga, but neither of them wanted to live there. Most of their friends had recently moved to Toronto, and they wanted to do the same. The couple set their sights on the city’s west end—just on the cusp of Etobicoke—which was still relatively close to work. The area also had housing stock that offered some of the suburban-style conveniences they wanted—a garage, a driveway and a big backyard for Whetter’s two huskies, Bukka and Shade. So they decided on a budget of $700,000 and started their search.

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The Goods

From the Print Edition

February 24, 2012 | 3:05 pm

28 Comments

The Chase: an investor finds the perfect money-making east end property

The Chase: Jeff Reed

By Bert Archer

The Buyer: Jeff Reed, the 40-year-old owner of the real estate investment firm Priority Management.

The Story: Reed is no stranger to the real estate market— he makes his living renovating and renting houses, and he’s taken on four such projects in the past 18 months alone. He likes the east end because there are still plenty of affordable pockets in rapidly gentrifying neighbourhoods. The housing stock is old, so his business concentrates on major overhauls, which can scare off most amateurs. For project number five, he was looking for something he could really sink his tools into: a place with a low basement to excavate, a bungalow to pop a second storey onto or a badly configured space in need of gutting. He set his purchase budget at $500,000, planning to spend about $200,000 on renovations. The idea was to make a great home for somebody else—and a tidy profit for himself and his investors.

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The Goods

From the Print Edition

December 2, 2011 | 12:05 pm

8 Comments

The Chase: A Markham couple races against time to find a house for their growing family

By Bert Archer

The Chase | The Buyers The Buyers: Dan Carmichael, a 39-year-old account executive for Dell Computers, and Dawn Carmichael, a 36-year-old medical insurance broker.

The Story: The Carmichaels liked their three- bedroom house in Markham, but they wanted something bigger—preferably with a fireplace and in the same school district as their current home, for their two kids—and had been casually surfing MLS for two years. When Dawn discovered she was pregnant with their third child, they realized they’d have to move fast if the baby was going to have his own room. The couple listed their house, and it sold in a week—with a 120-day closing. With their two due dates fast approaching, the Carmichaels set a budget of $550,000 and started out on a blitz-like two-month hunt.

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The Goods

From the Print Edition

October 17, 2011 | 10:30 am

3 Comments

The Chase: A rent-averse young professional moves out of his parents’ place and into a Danforth home

Rohan Pinto, a 28-year-old graphic designer. By Bert Archer

The Buyer: Rohan Pinto, a 28-year-old graphic designer.

The Story: Since graduating from Durham College in 2006, Pinto lived rent-free with his parents in Scarborough and commuted to his office at King and Spadina. “I’m of the school that sees paying rent as throwing your money away,” he says. Once he’d saved enough, he went looking for a place of his own. He started with condos, but soon learned that monthly fees can be as much as $800, which felt just like paying rent. He decided to buy a house, even if it meant having a slightly higher mortgage. He also liked the idea of finding a fixer-upper he could add value to over time. So he set his budget at $400,000, pinpointed a street he liked in the Woodbine Corridor (midway between work and his parents) and viewed house after house until he found The One.

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The Goods

From the Print Edition

July 11, 2011 | 10:45 am

Comments

The Sell: A Bloor West Village couple reaps the benefits of downsizing in a surging market

By Bert Archer

Listed for: $999,900. Sold for: $1,226,500. (Image: Courtesy of homeviewphoto.com)

The Sellers: Laura Ducharme, the 43-year-old host of Fido and Wine, in production for The Pet Network, and her husband Jason, a 51-year-old consultant.

The property: A 2,300-square-foot, four-bedroom house on Glenlake Avenue, just north of Bloor West Village.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

June 7, 2011 | 1:30 pm

Comments

50 Reasons to Love Toronto: No. 15, Everyone wants to live here

(Iimage: Eamon MacMahon)

Last February, the most expensive house on the Toronto market sold for $17.5 million. The Hogg’s Hollow estate, at 174 Teddington Park Avenue, was built in 1931 for an industrialist and CIBC director named Frederick Cowan, and was also owned for a while by Eric Philips, a co-founder of Argus Corp. Steve Stavro, the one-time Knob Hill Farms and Maple Leafs owner, bought the house in 1981. Ever since his death in 2006, it’s been on the market or in the hands of flippers. The new buyer is Daniel Hopp, a 31-year-old German businessman and son of billionaire Dietmar Hopp, co-founder of the business management software empire SAP. Hopp plans to move his family to Teddington and make it their primary residence.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

April 27, 2011 | 9:15 am

7 Comments

The Chase: the search for a Danforth house with an extra suite to rent out—for under $500,000

Jo-Anne McArthur

She wanted to stay in her neighbourhood, but she had to share her front door to do it By Bert Archer

The Buyer: Jo-Anne McArthur, a 34-year-old freelance photographer.

The Story: McArthur had been renting a house near Danforth and Jones for four years, and wanted to buy in the area. When her parents, who live in Ottawa, proposed purchasing an investment property, she figured they could team up, and she would buy them out in (she hoped) about 10 years. Since her parents wanted to earn some income from the house, she would look for a place with an extra suite to rent out—an easy stipulation for McArthur, who is usually abroad six months a year with her camera and is used to subletting to short-term tenants. With a maximum budget of $500,000, she enlisted Julie Hughes of Keller Williams and started the search.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

April 7, 2011 | 8:43 am

16 Comments

The Sell: finding a homebuyer who will honour an Annex classic, not obliterate it

Two sisters search for the right buyer for their parents’ place, a 19th-century Annex coach house with a mid-century modern interior By Bert Archer

Listed for: $1.099 million. Relisted for: $999,000. Sold for: $960,000

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

February 8, 2011 | 8:37 am

9 Comments

The Chase: searching for a classic Cabbagetown house for under $1 million

They wanted to stay in Cabbagetown. Their budget was just under $1 million. But the place had to be big enough for Cardinal Richelieu By Bert Archer

The Buyers: Keith Pfeiffer, a 50-year-old retired television director, and Lawrence Reiter, a 37‑year-old pharmacologist.

The Story: When Pfeiffer and Reiter moved to Toronto from their native Johannesburg in 2008, they bought a modest home: a semi-detached Cabbagetown Victorian on a narrow lot with no yard. Two years later, they started looking for an upgrade.

Their wish list: a house wide enough for their oversized furniture, with a yard for their three dogs and a large wall to display their huge antique portrait of Cardinal Richelieu. “The Cardinal has been in my family longer than I can remember,” says Pfeiffer. “It’s a beautiful piece.”

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

December 13, 2010 | 9:45 am

3 Comments

The Chase: a newlywed searches for a $1.5-million waterfront home to remind her of the Caribbean

A newlywed in a long-distance marriage searches for a waterfront home to remind her of the Caribbean By Bert Archer

THE BUYERS: Avis Glaze, an international education consultant, and her new husband, Peter Bailey, a retired IBM sales executive.

THE STORY: For three years, Glaze, a Unionville resident, had been casually looking for a Toronto waterfront home to remind her of Jamaica, where she was born. Then, mid-search, she married Bailey. One glitch: he lives in Vancouver. They devised a plan to live separately until Glaze found the perfect new home for them in Toronto. In a few years, they would relocate to B.C. together. Her budget was roughly $1.5 million, and she wanted something low-maintenance. When her Unionville house sold this past June, she had until the end of July to find a place.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

September 22, 2010 | 11:41 am

7 Comments

The Chase: two sisters show us how to find a Toronto condo on a tight deadline

THE BUYERS
Madeleine Kline, a 63-year-old former school secretary, and her sister Nicole Fasano, a 55‑year-old retiree who worked in book publishing.

THE STORY
When Fasano’s husband died in 2009, she decided to sell her Oakville house and move to Toronto with her daughter Casey (a 28-year-old interior designer, still living with Mom to build her savings). Meanwhile, Kline, who also lived in Oakville, wanted to move closer to her own daughter at Yonge and St. Clair. The sisters decided to combine their resources. Their limit was $500,000, enough for two bedrooms and a den (for Casey) in a building with a pool (Kline has MS and needs a pool for physiotherapy). They had to act fast: both Oakville homes sold in March and had end-of-April closing dates.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

September 10, 2010 | 8:39 am

1 Comment

The Sell: a downsizing couple spiffs up their multi-million-dollar mid-century modern home

The Sellers: Wendy Davis, the 47-year-old owner of a concierge service called Zebrano, and Peter Vesely, a 51-year-old retired investment banker who collects and sells 20th-century art and objects.

The House: A 4,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, three-bathroom house across from Cedarvale Park, near Bathurst and St. Clair.

The Story: Davis and Vesely had lived here for 12 years, turning it into a showcase for their mid-century modern furniture collection. By late 2009, they were itching to travel more and started to think about selling their big house to move into their second property, a Barton Myers–designed townhouse on Hazelton Avenue, which they’d been renting out. Then their dog, a 12-year-old Bouvier named Cruise, died. “We’d always said that losing Cruise would be the right time for us to make the transition,” says Davis. They listed the uptown house in March to attract the first spring buyers.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

July 21, 2010 | 8:46 am

13 Comments

The Chase: Upper Beach for under $475,000? The search for an under-asking miracle

A family in the Upper Beach was determined to find a detached house for less than $475,000 By Bert Archer

THE BUYERS
Gordon Springle, a 45-year-old real estate agent, and his wife, Ruthann Clayton, a 46-year-old home stager.

THE STORY
Springle, a former French teacher, flipped five houses in six years before becoming a full-time real estate agent in 2003. He and his wife were renting a semi on Main, near Gerrard, but after a few years there, they were tired of the traffic and noise from the busy intersection. Springle gave himself a challenge: find a house on a quieter street, still within walking distance of their daughter’s high school, which meant somewhere between Victoria Park and Main, Kingston Road and Gerrard, for no more than $475,000.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

July 6, 2010 | 9:05 am

21 Comments

Risk Assessment: a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood guide to the safest places to buy real estate in Toronto

No neighbourhood will react the same way to a burst bubble. We talked to market watchers, economists, mortgage brokers and seen-it-all real estate agents for the scoop on where to park your money, what streets to avoid and when to sell, sell, sell By Bert Archer

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

May 26, 2010 | 8:43 am

13 Comments

Super-Sized Real Estate

How one couple built their dream home, a $5-million south Mississauga mansion, and then realized it was just too big By Bert Archer

The Sellers
Ed Hand, a 53-year-old client manager at a personal injury law firm in Ajax, and his wife, Reta Hand.

The House
A 6,000-square-foot, six-bedroom, six-bathroom, multi-gabled mansion in Mississauga’s tony lakefront Lorne Park neighbourhood. Extras included a saltwater swimming pool with a waterfall, an outdoor bar (“Ed’s Place”) with a flat-screen TV, and a massive 3,500-square-foot finished basement featuring a wine cellar, movie theatre, exercise room and game room.

The Story
Hand had lived in condos and a relatively modest 3,400-square-foot house his entire adult life. In 2006, he began building his dream home. By 2008, when the Hands finally moved in, they had exceeded their budget by $1.5 million in a quest to go over the top: there was the $250,000 sound system, the $600,000 in landscaping and $700,000 in furniture. “I got a little carried away,” Ed says. The Hands, who shared the house with their three 20-something sons, soon realized their home was way too big. There were entire rooms, such as the upstairs lounge, that no one in the family ever used. In June 2009, they put the house on the market for $4.9 million.

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All stories by Bert Archer

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