When you know it's too good to be true

"Help! This plant is growing behind my office in Calgary and I can't identify it" tweeted Christene.

Gloria had some "wonderful old flowers" suddenly appear in her Canmore yard, so she sent photos by email. Mehran fell in love with a beautiful plant he saw in a Springbank ditch. He texted me a photo. Pretty and mysterious plants were suddenly on all my media.

"Our office building is about two blocks west of the Bow River. There's always a bunch of interesting plants growing out back behind the warehouse loading dock so I'm always trying to identify them, see if there are any plants I can steal to put in my garden. I had never seen anything like this one before and probably spent a good hour trying to figure out what it was," said Christene by follow-up email. But of course anything this exotic and pretty and springing out of nowhere could only be one thing. Christene and Gloria and Mehran all had or wanted to know more about weeds. Pretty, vigorous weeds.

The changing face of the first home purchase

A starter home has long been understood to mean a dwelling that represents someone's first foray into home ownership.

Mattamy Homes' vice-president of sales and marketing in Calgary, Warren Saunders, says, at its core, "It's a home that offers the best price and the best value for a new family starting out."

Donna Moore, the outgoing co-CEO of the Canadian Home Builders' Association (CHBA) – Urban Development Institute (UDI) Calgary Region Association, qualifies, however, that what constitutes a starter home today is very different from one of 30 years ago.

3D technology offers potential buyers round the clock viewing

Technology with its roots in video gaming is now making it increasingly easy to tour a home, or any other space, without leaving your couch.

Online home tours photographed with a 3D camera like the Matterport Pro are so close to being there, about the only thing you can't do is reach out and touch the walls. It's the maturing of technology that was first brought to the mass market in an Xbox game controller.

"Around 2010, 3D cameras were becoming available to detect gestures — the Microsoft Kinect being the best-known example," said Bill Brown, the CEO of Matterport, a Silicon Valley firm that specializes in immersive 3D media, including hardware, software and real-world uses for the technology.

Former CREB® president Marilyn Jones revelled in changing Calgary market

For much of her career, former CREB® president Marilyn Jones focused on helping clients from across Canada relocate to Calgary and find a house.

She liked the pressure – often times people had just a few days to look at houses in a new city, make a major decision and submit an offer – and was comfortable managing the many demands that needed to be juggled.

Those same skills came in handy when Jones became CREB® president in 2005.

Signs of economic hardship started to reveal themselves by the end of 2014, recalled then-CREB® president Bill Kirk 

While the true severity of the economic slump currently dominating headlines had yet to been felt in 2014, Bill Kirk said the writing was already on the wall by the end of his tenure as CREB® president.

Oil production in the Middle East had just started to ramp up, prices for a barrel had started to fall and jobs in Calgary were suddenly in question, he recalled.

"By the end of 2014, there was talk of an oil glut," said Kirk. "We knew there would be fallout ... (but) no one knew what would happen.

"We were all surprised at how slowly through 2015 the bad news hit."

Facade to respect original design

Trading one of Calgary's historic landmarks for another, Calgary Municipal Land Corp. (CMLC) – the organization responsible for transforming East Village into one one of the city's most sought-after neighbourhoods – has relocated its offices from the Hillier Building at 429 Eighth Avenue S.E. to the historic St. Louis Hotel right across the street.

In anticipation of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway's arrival at Fort Calgary, Colonel James Walker developed the St. Louis Hotel in 1914. It underwent a major renovation in 1959, and in 2008 the City of Calgary designated the building as a Municipal Historic Resource.

Rooftop Plaza located at Fire Station 1

The City of Calgary officially reopened the Rooftop Plaza on Fire Station 1, located at 450 First St. S.E., providing a rejuvenated green space for Calgarians who live and work in the downtown core, and for visitors to the city.

The Rooftop Plaza renovation was undertaken to make much needed repairs to the Fire Station 1 roof and to breathe new life into the Plaza that had fallen into disrepair.

Former CREB® president John Fraser recalled new sense of hope in 1990 after decade of challenges

A fresh start: that's how many viewed 1990, recalled then-CREB® president John Fraser.

"We had just come out of an extremely difficult period," he said, referencing a decade defined by the National Energy Program, soaring interest rates and growing unemployment in the province.

"In about the mid '80s, things started to improve. And by about 1990, if you can believe it, almost 10 years later, we were almost back to where we were in 1981 in terms of house prices."

Alberta's out-of-province playground still drawing buyers

Kelowna's healthy economy and population growth are driving resale home transactions up and fuelling higher levels of new home construction, suggesting a sellers' market, according to housing industry figures.

And the lure of the valley continues to draw buyers from Alberta despite the province's economic downturn.

The largest city in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Kelowna has recorded nearly 3,600 sales for the first half of this year compared with slightly more than 2,700 a year ago, according to figures from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC).

Seniors officials praise program designed to promote aging in place

Local seniors' housing officials are praising a new provincial government program designed to assist seniors who want to "age in place" in their homes rather than having to move.

The Seniors Home Adaptation and Repair Program (SHARP), approved earlier this month, offers low-interest, home-equity-based loans to seniors, which can be used for renovations or repairs to make a home more suitable for their needs.