How much is your home worth? 

It’s a simple question with a complex answer, but one thing’s for sure, if you want to find the current value of your home, you can’t rely on your property tax assessments alone! 

First-time Home Buyers' Plan offers a path to ownership

A house can be a great investment, but saving enough for a down payment can be difficult. The Home Buyers' Plan (HBP), offered by the Government of Canada, is a program that aids the purchase of a first home by allowing part of a registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) to be withdrawn as a tax-free down payment in cash.

"This is about the only program that is available now through the federal government," said David P. Brown, president of CREB®.

The importance of a Real Property Report when buying a house

While many documents come into play when purchasing your home, one of the most important is the Real Property Report (RPR).

A real property report is a requirement during a standard real estate transaction and, in Calgary, Alberta Land Surveyors' Association (ALSA) members complete those reports.

"A Real Property Report is a legal document that shows the boundaries of the property in question and the improvements relative to those boundaries. When I say improvements, that includes of course the house, but also the deck, shed, garage and fence that may be on the property," said Brian Munday, executive director of Alberta Land Surveyors' Association (ALSA).

Staying one step ahead of the consumer technology bubble

"Everything you see here today will be totally obsolete in four years."

Those words of wisdom came from Bill Gates, spoken to Alberta-based technology commentator Steve Makris just before Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft.

"Count on everything changing every few years," said Makris, whose reviews and analysis of consumer technology can be found in Postmedia newspapers, on Global TV and at techuntangled.ca.

"The cycle of technology, even smart technology, arriving to consumers and disappearing altogether is getting shorter."

How a massive flood couldn't stop Brian Beck's vision of a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired inner-city home

Twelve years ago, Brian Beck, wife Lynne Rennie and two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Kate, jumped into their newly acquired airstream trailer and hit the road for three months.

With no real itinerary, only the desire to travel south in advance of winter, the family stopped at the Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) Fallingwater house, built in the 1930s over a waterfall in southwest Pennsylvania.

That stop led the Calgary corporate lawyer – now president of Cococo Chocolatiers with Chocolaterie Bernard Callebaut stores across Canada – to nine other FLW sites during those travels.

This began a journey transforming the couple's original 1,340-square-foot, 1950s Bridgeland bungalow into an homage to the brilliant Wright, who designed more than 1,000 structures over a 70-year span.

Making the transition from renting to buying is a lot about finding the right location with inventory that fits your budget

As a single female with a career in the arts, Jamie Dunsdon wasn't sure she could even qualify for a mortgage to enter the property-purchasing arena.

"I was afraid the only thing I could afford was something terrible," said Dunsdon, who is the artistic director with Verb Theatre.

After nine years of renting in Calgary, Dunsdon says she had enough of renting at high prices and hopped in the market last summer. As with all folks who are looking to purchase a property, location and budget were a major part of her decision.

With a commanding view of the city, Joshua Pinter and Michelle Maguire are enjoying the high life

Thirty-somethings Joshua Pinter and Michelle Maguire made the leap into home ownership in November of 2016.

The couple purchased a two-bedroom home on the 26th floor of the second tower at the Guardian project in Victoria Park. The recently married and energetic duo have busy careers: Joshua is a product manager for a software company and Michelle works in business development. The couple says they both have the downtown mentality so they kept their home search to a small radius around the core. They both loved the view from the Guardian with its floor-to-ceiling glazing and vistas of both the mountains and the downtown's high rises.

Many Albertans are looking close to home when it comes to buying a vacation property 

Calgary residents Nora and Norval Horner recall many summer vacations spent along Alberta's Gull Lake.

"Nora's family had a cottage on Gull Lake, and we used that cottage a lot while our kids were growing up. We'd come up the end of June and stay 'til Labour Day," recalled Norval.

They loved cottage life so much that when an opportunity arose to purchase 210 acres of land along the northeast corner of Gull Lake, the Horners bought it and started their own cottage development – Meridian Beach.

There is no need to leave town with a garden retreat in your back yard

Together with her husband Bruce, Linda converted a back yard shed into a retreat – a cabin retreat.

"You gotta have a cabin in the back yard," said Linda, my neighbour.

Devices that allow you to monitor everything, from cooking progress in your Crock-Pot down to the forkful of food you just ate

Chances are at some point in the past five or six years you've heard the phrase, "the Internet of things." In some industrial tech circles it's even being shortened to "IoT" these days.

Sounds cool and acronym-y, right? And like a lot of the buzzwords that propagate online today, you have to wonder sometimes if the people using it even know what it means.

I'm going to talk about kitchen appliances in a minute here, but because connected appliances are prime examples of the Internet of things in action, let's get clear on the term first.