Sold!!!

Sold to some great buyers and got them a great deal!!! Congratulations!!!!

2323 Shannon Heights Place

Trever Florko, REALTOR
Century 21 Assurance Realty (Kelowna)
Cell: (250) 859-5990
Office: (250) 869-0101
Fax: (250) 869-0105
Visit my website: www.florko.ca

PS. Your referrals to friends and family are always greatly appreciated and rewarded.

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SOLD!

Sold to some great buyers and got them a great deal!!! Congratulations!!!!

11147 Pretty Road

Trever Florko, REALTOR
Century 21 Assurance Realty (Kelowna)
Cell: (250) 859-5990
Office: (250) 869-0101
Fax: (250) 869-0105
Visit my website: www.florko.ca

PS. Your referrals to friends and family are always greatly appreciated and rewarded.

Posted via email from treverflorko's posterous

Jalapeno cheddar corn bread

I wanted some corn bread so I made a triple batch! Portion control problems. Lol. Nope. It freezes well.

Sent on the go from my iPhone
Trever Florko, REALTOR Century 21 Assurance Realty (Kelowna) Cell: (250) 859-5990 Office: (250) 869-0101 Fax: (250) 869-0105 Visit my website: www.florko.ca

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Flower exchange

Tiffany surprised me with rises and I surprised her with lilies....get outta my head;-)

Sent on the go from my iPhone
Trever Florko, REALTOR Century 21 Assurance Realty (Kelowna) Cell: (250) 859-5990 Office: (250) 869-0101 Fax: (250) 869-0105 Visit my website: www.florko.ca

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HST for Home Buyers: How Will HST Affect Me?

Download now or preview on posterous

HST and Housing_CHBA.pdf (225 KB)

Trever Florko, REALTOR
Century 21 Assurance Realty (Kelowna)
Cell: (250) 859-5990
Office: (250) 869-0101
Fax: (250) 869-0105
Visit my website: www.florko.ca

PS. Your referrals to friends and family are always greatly appreciated and rewarded.

Posted via email from treverflorko's posterous

Important changes to Mortgage Rules effective MARCH 18TH

Changes to the Rules for Government Insured Mortgages

Since October 2009, the Government of Canada has been systematically tightening mortgage financing regulations for all federally regulated lenders.  The changes have been made in order to ensure that Canadians are prepared for higher interest rates in the future by not taking on too much debt, which will improve the stability ofCanada's housing market.

On January 17, 2011, Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced additional changes to the rules for government insured mortgages. 

We want to be sure you understand the changes and how they might affect your clients' home financing options. Three new measures that have been announced are as follows:

New Guidelines – Effective March 18^th 2011

1) Lowering the maximum amount consumers can borrow     when refinancing their home

This change will lower the maximum mortgage amount for refinances to 85% of the appraised value of the property from the current 90%. This change will help to promote savings in homeownership and ensure that homeowners don’t become overextended by using all the equity they have built up in their home when refinancing.

2)  Reducing the maximum amortization period for new government insured (default insured) mortgages

The maximum amortization for all new default insured mortgages will be reduced to 30 years from the current 35 years. This change will help reduce total borrowing costs for consumers, helping them to build up equity more quickly.

As an example, a $300,000 mortgage with a 4.5% interest rate and an amortization of 35 years has a monthly payment of $1412.05 and total interest cost of $293,059.17 over the life of the mortgage. The same mortgage with a 30 year amortization has a monthly payment of $1512.65 but total interest cost reduces to $244,551.49. The difference of roughly $100 a month in monthly payment reduces the interest cost by almost $50,000 over the life of the mortgage.

New Guideline - Effective April 18th 2011

3) Withdrawing government insurance backing on lines of credit secured by homes

Home equity lines of credit generally offer a variable interest rate and often have no repayment terms associated with them, which exposes borrowers to an increase in interest costs should interest rates as expected. Due to an increase in the household debt associated with these loans, the federal government wants to limit the amount of equity for which these loans can be granted

Loans that have repayment terms associated with them will still be eligible for default insurance.

We're here to help your clients get the right advice

Getting pre approved for a mortgage is a great first step in the home buying process, but reviewing that pre approval as a result of these changes is very important.

Trever Florko, REALTOR
Century 21 Assurance Realty (Kelowna)
Cell: (250) 859-5990
Office: (250) 869-0101
Fax: (250) 869-0105
Visit my website: www.florko.ca

PS. Your referrals to friends and family are always greatly appreciated and rewarded.

Posted via email from treverflorko's posterous

Canada is quietly surpassing the U.S. as the land of opportunity

Article in the  "Washington Times” January 4th

BACON: Go north, young man, go north

Canada is quietly surpassing the U.S. as the land of opportunity

By James A. Bacon

The Washington Times

6:29 p.m., Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Illustration: Canada and freedom

Unless the Winter Olympics are on television or someone is clubbing baby seals, Americans don't pay much attention to what's happening in Canada. It's as if we live in a house with a set of quiet, orderly neighbors on one side and a bachelor pad with drunken parties, girls in the hot tub and occasional gunshot eruptions on the other. To whom would you pay more attention?

I dare say Americans could correctly name the president of Mexico (Filipe Calderon) over the prime minister of Canada (Stephen Harper) by a margin of 5-to-1. That's too bad. While we have every reason to fear the disorder spilling over from our increasingly lawless neighbor to the south, our well-mannered Canadian neighbors have pulled their act together. We could learn a lot from them.

Look what's not happening in Canada. There is no real estate crisis. There is no banking crisis. There is no unemployment crisis. There is no sovereign debt crisis. Recent reports suggest that consumers are loading up too much debt, but Canada shares that problem with nearly every other country in the industrialized world.

Among the Group of Seven nations, which also include the United States, France, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy, Canada's economic activity has come the closest to returning to the pre-recession peak. The country has recovered three-quarters of all jobs it lost. TheInternational Monetary Fund estimates that Canada will be the only country among the G-7 to have achieved a balanced budget by 2015.

Now, instead of expanding Canada's welfare state, the conservative government led by Mr. Harper is intent upon building the nation's global competitiveness. Our friends in the Great White North cut their corporate tax rate to 16.5 percent on Jan. 1 and will see it drop to 15 percent next year. That compares to the current U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent.. That will give Canada the lowest corporate tax rate among the G-7 nations and an eye-popping advantage for businesses wondering whether to locate on the U.S. or Canadian side of the border.

The last time Canadians really caught Americans' eyes was when prime ministers such as Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, both leaders of the Liberal Party, were proving uncooperative in the realm of foreign policy. American media played up disagreements over the invasion of Iraq and Canadian participation in the American National Missile Defense Program, which made President George W. Bush look bad and confirmed the narrative that his cowboy foreign policy had alienated old friends around the world. By contrast, when Canadian soldiers under the conservative government became active combatants in Afghan-istan, the American media showed little interest.

But that's nothing new. Except to note how well or how poorly Canada's national health care system was working, Americans have paid little heed to news coming out of Ottawa. The titanic effort of both Canada's liberal and conservative parties in the 1990s and 2000s to rein in government spending largely escaped our notice. Nor did it ever occur to anyone to wonder why, with our economies so closely entwined, U.S. housing *****s were busting through the roof while Canadian houses remained so sensible.

It turns out that Ottawa's housing policies and banking regulations tempered the boom in real estate *****s. No tax deductions for mortgage interest payments.. And get this: Buyers actually had to make down payments on their houses. Because there was no real estate bust, there was no banking crisis. (Indeed, healthy Canadian banks are snapping up U.S. financial assets.) Despite the lack of public policies geared toward stimulating homeownership, Canadian homeownership was 68.4 percent in 2008. That would be a higher number than in the United States, which was 67.4 percent in 2009.

Lesson to Americans: If you want affordable housing, stop promoting policies to make it more "affordable."

Meanwhile, Canada has many of the same assets that Americans like to brag about, such as an immigrant tradition that invites foreigners to live and work in the country. On a per-capita basis, the rate of legal immigration to Canada is comparable to that to the U.S. Settling in world-class, creative cities like Toronto and Vancouver, foreigners add immeasurably to the nation's wealth-creating capacity

Talented Canadians have long regarded the United States as the land of opportunity. It may not be long before Americans see our northern neighbor as the land of the future.

James A. Bacon is author of the book "Boomergeddon" (Oaklea Press, 2010) and publisher of the blog by the same name.

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