Selling Your Home This Fall: Take Time to Prep Your Yard
January 23rd, 2010 by adminWith the weather turning cooler and gardens showing their less vibrant side, it is a good idea to prep your yard for prospective buyers so that they look well maintained and easy to take care of.
One of the most important things to take care of in the fall, especially if you live in an area that gets a lot of precipitation is gutter maintenance. Well-functioning gutters that aren’t all clogged with leaves will decrease your chances of a basement flood or gutter damage later in the winter. Make sure that your gutters are clean of any leafy debris and are securely attached to the house. Even if it’s not particularly raining where you live, melting snow later in the year can cause drainage issues.
To minimize damage to your trees and shrubs while supporting their general heath it is a good idea to prune or trim your trees, shrubs, and bushes usually in the late fall after they are finished with their growing season. Each individual type of plant will require a slightly different handling, so make sure you look up the pruning requirements for your specific plants.
In areas that receive a great deal of winter winds or accumulations of snow, you may want to prepare your shrubs for rougher weather. Some delicate shrubs may require a shelter to keep the snow off of it; you can wait until closer to the time that snow is expected to do this, but try not to push the envelope too far and have the first snow hit before you’ve taken care of these plants. Evergreen shrubs may require wrapping to keep them from breaking under the weight of a snowfall; usually these plants are wrapped with a mesh or burlap to keep the branches supported.
Your lawn is a fairly easy area of the yard to winterize; mow the lawn until the growth slows for the cooler season. This will vary from area to area due to climate. Use a weed & feed product on your lawn to control plant pests as well as encourage grass growth in the spring. To encourage better aeration, use a thatching rake to remove the dead grass from your lawn. Keep dropped leaves off the lawn as well to keep it healthy.
If you have a vegetable garden then you should turn the soil and add some compost to it to nurture the soil for the spring. Don’t get stuck thinking that you’re selling your home so you don’t need to do these steps; if your home doesn’t sell you will want your garden ready for you to plant. Also, taking care of your entire yard makes prospective buyers look more favorably on your whole property.
If Mortgage Rates Can Fall Through the “floor” of the Prime Rate…what Else is Under the Floor?
October 6th, 2009 by admin“Lower than prime,” you heard someone say. Like most Canadians, you were probably first skeptical and then confused. We tend to think of the prime lending rate as the invisible “floor” of lending rates. The very best customers can get very close to that floor. It is theoretically possible, we reason, to actually be ON the floor, but not possible to be below it.
Nevertheless, Canadian lenders offer mortgages at prime minus 0.5% to even minus 0.7%. So the floor isn’t the lowest you can go. There’s something under the “floor”. The rate known as “prime” has been the popular benchmark for lending in Canada. When business reporters talk about interest rate movement, they usually talk about what’s happening with prime. But there are other benchmarks in money rates, though they are typically for use by professional money managers. The most significant of these is the Banker’s Acceptance rate.
While “prime” is a set rate which is offered to a lender’s best customers, the Banker’s Acceptance is the rate which financial institutions use to lend money to one another. And it’s typically well below the prime rate. Look for the “Money Rates”section of your favourite newspaper, and you can compare Prime with the Banker’s
Acceptance rates for yourself. “Interesting,” you think, “but why does it matter?” Well, as new lending institutions begin to offer a slate of innovative new loan options, a new mortgage has emerged that is based on the Banker’s Acceptance rate: offering a mortgage rate of 1% over the 3-month Banker’s Acceptance.
If you compared the rock-bottom prime-based variable mortgage rate – prime less 0.5% to 0.7% – with the new adjustable BA-based rate, you would find that the BA-based rate would have delivered significant savings over the past several years, as rates were dropping. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the BA-based rates have historically been considerably lower than prime. Secondly, the prime rate tends to be “stickier” in an environment where rates are falling. Often, the more fluid, market-based BA rates deliver the rate change more quickly.
Any variable- or adjustable-rate Ontario mortgage is an excellent option when interest rates are either dropping or stable. Not surprisingly, they’ve been a very popular choice in the past few years. There are some rumblings now that rates may begin to increase, but flexible-rate mortgages still remain an excellent choice for those looking to save some interest.
As always, you should consult with a mortgage professional to find the mortgage that suits your personal financial needs. An independent mortgage broker can provide you with information on a broad range of mortgage options from a wide variety of lending institutions, so you can compare features and options at a glance.
And remember, it’s worth taking some time to look beyond prime and explore what’s “under the floor” in mortgage options!
