Sepehr Safaee YourOttawaRealEstate.com's blog

Staging a home is a powerful tool in Canada’s competitive real estate market. It enhances a property’s appeal by showcasing its best features and helping potential buyers envision themselves living there.

One of the key reasons is that staging helps buyers envision themselves living in the space. When personal items are removed and the space is arranged with inviting, neutral decor, it becomes easier for potential buyers to imagine how they would utilize the home themselves. This emotional connection can lead to faster sales, often closing at higher prices​

Create a Vision for Buyers
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If you have clutter and find your home unorganized, follow these 7 top organizing tips and you’ll be on your way to having a peaceful and orderly home.

#1: Focus on ONE small area and finish it before going on to another

The first thing a client usually says when I go to their home is that they are overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. Don’t look at the big picture, instead focus on one small area that you would like to declutter and organize. For example, start with your kitchen counter or one corner of your storage room.

#2: Keep, toss, sell, or donate

Go through each item...

Intense rain storms can seriously damage your home unless you protect it.

More intense storms are just one of the many faces of climate change, according to climate scientists. There’s no reason to think Ottawa homes and families are immune to climate change and its ravages, including torrential downpours.

With that in mind, here’s some of what you can do to protect the home you love. You should get started on these things now, because letting things slide is only human and when it’s too late, it’s too late.

Roof: A semi-annual inspection will alert you to missing or damaged...

4 tips for the best bathroom renovation

If you’re planning a bathroom renovation, or you will be creating a new one as part of a home building project, take note. When it comes to bathrooms, there are many chances to mess up in ways that aren’t obvious until it’s too late.

Abundant moisture, lots of traffic and small floor areas mean a new bathroom renovation often ages poorly if you don’t have the correct hidden features in place. And by hidden features I mostly mean systems that waterproof things from behind the scenes.

Whatever you do, remember the four details you’ll find here....

Wood-free deck materials make for easier living

Would you like your new deck, gazebo or other outdoor structure to last longer and require far less maintenance? Wood-free alternatives are becoming more common and better, offering easier living, less maintenance and longer working life.

Steel deck frames

The biggest part of any deck is the support frame, and posts, beams and joists are still most often made of wood. Wood combines great strength, resistance to sagging and reasonable price, but it’s prone to rot. Steel deck frames are the newest structural alternative to wood and...

Maintenance Calendar - May

Home maintenance is easy to forget or put off. But following a preventive home maintenance schedule extends the life of your home, helps avoid costly repairs later and can mean a better price when you eventually sell. In many cases, we even explain how to do a task. Our calendar below helps you stay on track.

Caulking

Inspect caulking around windows and doors, replacing if necessary. 

Ceiling fans

Switching fan direction is a twice-yearly task. 

Coffee maker

You need to clean it regularly. 

Dryer check

Clean lint from your dryer to prevent build-up and...

Equifax vs Credit Karma: What’s the difference?

Credit Karma and Equifax play different roles when it comes to your credit.

Equifax is one of the two main Canadian credit bureaus, along with TransUnion. These companies compile information about your credit into reports that are used to generate your credit score.

Credit Karma isn’t a credit bureau, which means we don’t determine your credit score.

Instead, we work with TransUnion to provide you with your free credit report and free credit score. We also show recommendations for credit cards and personal loans, and help connect...

You can tell a lot about a society by the quality of indoor clothes drying racks it offers for sale. When you’ve got a population seriously committed to household conservation and energy efficiency, you’ll find excellent drying racks in stores everywhere. But when you’ve got a society that’s largely ignorant of the hidden costs of running every wet article of clothing through a power-gobbling dryer, you’ll find stores littered with $49.98 drying racks that bend, break, and collapse.

Sadly, over the last four or five decades, Canada has become a cheap drying rack kind of place, though I...

The Canadian mortgage space is already seeing some rates on offer decline heading into the spring market, despite no clear indication yet from the Bank of Canada that interest rate cuts are imminent.

Experts who spoke to Global News say despite variable-rate mortgages remaining the more expensive option today, it’s a “good environment” to consider the product for homebuyers and refinancers who are comfortable with a bit more risk.

James Laird, co-CEO of Ratehub.ca, says it’s a better market to get a mortgage today than last fall when rates peaked.

Fixed mortgages on offer have...

Homes valued between $500,000 and $750,000 now account for the largest proportion of the real estate market in Ottawa, as home prices continue to rise across Ontario.

Newly released data from the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation shows homes valued between $500,000 and $750,000 account for 43.2 per cent of Ottawa's properties, while only 19 per cent of homes are valued under $500,000.

The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation looked at the values of residential properties in Ottawa and across Ontario in 2013 and 2023.

The number of properties valued under $500,000 in...