Martin with the new addition to the Elder home, Mila.
House pets are a welcome comfort in the home. I love dogs but for practical reasons, cats have been my chosen companions for years.
As a child I remember going to the corner store to buy Black Cat cigarettes for my Dad! You can’t do that today! Black cats have since been my favourite.
House pets rely on us, their caretakers, for their wellbeing. When selling a home, extra care should be taken to prepare them, and the house, for the special Buyer who walks through the front door. Take steps to prepare your house pets, especially cats, for the change in routine. Cats have feelings, too!
Not all houses in the National Capital Region come with an enormous price tag. Luckily, there are still some affordable homes for sale around Ottawa if you’re on a tight budget.
The average price of a home in Ottawa is $591,413, according to Zoocasa. But if you’re willing to look outside of the city, you can find much cheaper options.
Here are eight incredible places to live that will make you eager to pack up your stuff and move, including one home with a pool.
Five-Bedroom Home
Price: $299,900
Address: 981 Dianne Ave., Rockland, ON
Description: If you crave a separate space for your home office, this five-bedroom home with a garage has tons of room.
Constance Lake Retreat
Price: $260,000
Address: 168 Constance Lake Rd., Ottawa, ON
Description: While living here, you can enjoy swimming in the pool and the picturesque lake view.
Two-Bedroom Duplex
Price: $259,900
Address: 138 Rue Archambault, Gatineau, QC
Description: This duplex has so much potential and is only a short drive from restaurants and stores.
Empty offices left behind by newly minted remote workers and other upheaval caused by the pandemic have begun to show up on the rental market, and it’s presenting some prospective tenants with opportunities they couldn’t have imagined prior to COVID-19.
“They’re getting the red carpet rolled out,” said Darren Fleming, an Ottawa-based commercial real estate broker.
It’s almost a year into the pandemic, and Fleming and his team at Real Strategy Advisors are seeing companies that were on the fence about what to do with office space that’s been sitting empty now starting to downsize.
“It’s to either get rid of about half their space or go [fully] virtual,” said Fleming, the firm’s CEO.
That’s an even bigger shift than he expected just six months ago, when he estimated clients would shed about 25 per cent of their space.
But for those clients who are looking for new space, Fleming says they have an “unparalleled amount of choice” and the potential to land incentives such as free rent for one year.
“If you’re a tenant looking for space right now, there’s a whole lot of people who don’t have a lot of alternatives to rent to,” he said.
Michael McNaught and his growing team at RVezy, an RV rental marketplace company, are prospective tenants seeing the market change first-hand.
In March 2020, McNaught was about to sign a lease for new office space in Ottawa, but then the pandemic hit. RVezy sent all of its staff home to work remotely and put the lease-signing on hold.
Since then, RVezy’s business has doubled and its workforce has nearly tripled from about 20 employees at the start of 2020 to 55 now, with plans to keep hiring.
“We just happened to be one of the fortunate businesses that was well suited during this pandemic,” McNaught, the company’s co-founder, said.