2009 Toronto Star Columns

Imposing mandatory energy reports will further depress prices and sales volumes

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca The Ontario Court of Appeal has written what may well be the final chapter in what I call The Case of the $100,000 Fence. The case involved a dispute over a strip of land between two houses on Johnston Ave. near Sheppard and Yonge in North...

CBC MARKETPLACE - NEW HOME NIGHTMARES - Wendy Mesley (with Mike Holmes and Bob Aaron)

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca The already battered real estate industry had reason for concern when Premier Dalton McGuinty said last month that "we owe it to ourselves to take a good, long hard look" at harmonizing the GST with the Ontario provincial sales tax. In...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca British Columbia has become the first province in Canada to license home inspectors in order to protect buyers by ensuring qualified inspections. The B.C. model could well serve as a template for similar legislation in Ontario. In announcing the...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca Earlier this month, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a decisive ruling that clarifies once and for all that the interest paid on a mortgage taken out to purchase a principal residence cannot be tax deductible under any circumstances (unless...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca Is a real estate agent responsible for accurately advertising the lot size? What happens if he or she gets it wrong? Those were the questions facing clients of mine recently. Last August, Regina and Leon signed an agreement to buy a house in...

Bob Aaron bob@aaron.ca A territorial judge in the Yukon has told the local real estate industry to take a hard look at one of its standard form documents. His comments were made in the context of a case involving what we in Ontario call a Seller Property Information...

Judge rules that deck should have been inspected at the end of construction, not earlier