The Group at Re/Max First

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The Group at Re/Max First We help buyers and sellers in the Calgary real estate market.

Before you spend anything on making this house warmer, find out who is paying for part of it.October is when people star...
10/22/2026

Before you spend anything on making this house warmer, find out who is paying for part of it.

October is when people start thinking about heating costs and start getting quotes, and it is also when most of them skip the step that changes the math. There are rebate and incentive programs running in most of Calgary and the surrounding region, at the municipal, provincial or state, and federal levels, and they usually stack. People find out about them afterward, which is the one time they do not apply.

The other thing worth knowing is that this work does not all return the same way. Air sealing is the least exciting item on the list and the best return, because it costs a fraction of anything else and you feel it immediately. Attic insulation is next, because that is where the heat you paid for goes. Heat pumps carry the largest incentives right now and the largest cost, which is exactly why the rebate changes the decision.

New windows are the one to be careful with. They are wonderful, they are expensive, and the payback on energy savings alone is long. Replace them when they are failing, not to save on heat.

Look up your programs before you book a single quote. The order matters.

Unpopular opinion. Pricing high to leave room to negotiate is what costs you the negotiation.I know why it feels right. ...
10/21/2026

Unpopular opinion. Pricing high to leave room to negotiate is what costs you the negotiation.

I know why it feels right. You want a cushion. You do not want to leave money on the table. Somebody told you that you can always come down. All of that sounds like caution and none of it is.

Here is what actually happens. The first two weeks are the only time your listing gets shown to every buyer already looking in Calgary. That audience does not come back. If your number is wrong during that window, you do not get a second first impression; you get a slow drift and a series of reductions that each read as a little more desperate than the last. By the time you reach the number you would have taken in week one, the market has watched the whole thing happen.

A home priced correctly gets negotiated up by competition. A home priced high gets negotiated down by time.

Disagree with me. I have this conversation weekly and I am not tired of it yet.

The problem hiding on title usually appears when the clock is already running.Most of the time it is invisible. Somebody...
10/20/2026

The problem hiding on title usually appears when the clock is already running.

Most of the time it is invisible. Somebody checks, everything is clean, you never hear about it again. But the surprises it turns up are real, and every one of them takes time to clear. Time is the problem, not usually the item itself.

What it is actually doing is confirming that the person selling has the right to sell, and that nothing attached to the property follows it to you.

The four that come up most: a lien from unpaid work, unpaid taxes, or a judgment, which clears from the sale proceeds but takes coordination. An old mortgage that was paid off years ago and never formally discharged, which is extremely common and reliably slower than anyone expects. An easement or right of way, a utility corridor, a shared driveway, a neighbor’s long-standing access, which you usually live with but should know about before you own it. And a survey or boundary issue, a fence that is not on the line or a structure crossing it, which is the one that can genuinely change what you are buying.

Almost all of it is fixable. Almost none of it is fixable quickly.

Which is the actual argument for building a realistic closing date instead of an aggressive one. Nobody clears a title issue in forty-eight hours because you would like them to.

If you are buying in Calgary this fall, leave room in the calendar.

Your lease is up in the spring and that date is going to make the decision for you unless you get in front of it now.Thi...
10/19/2026

Your lease is up in the spring and that date is going to make the decision for you unless you get in front of it now.

This is the most common way renters in Calgary end up renting for another year, and it has almost nothing to do with the market. It is a scheduling problem. A lease ends, the search has not started, and suddenly the choice is between renewing for twelve months or buying something in four weeks. Most people renew, which is the right call in that moment and the wrong position to have ended up in.

The runway is longer than people expect. Lender conversations, gathering documents, actually looking, an offer, conditions, and a closing period add up to about three to four months even when nothing goes sideways. Working backward from a spring lease end, that means the work starts around now.

There is also a middle option nobody mentions, which is asking your landlord about a shorter renewal or a month-to-month extension. They say yes more often than renters expect, because the alternative is a vacancy.

And if renting is the right call for another year, that is a real answer, not a failure. If you might move for work, if your income is about to change, or if the down payment would take every dollar of your cushion, staying put is the better decision.

Put one date in your calendar: the day you call a lender. That is the whole first step.

Send this to whoever you are renting with.

Almost every seller has a version of the same question, usually phrased as “should we do the kitchen before we list?” Th...
10/17/2026

Almost every seller has a version of the same question, usually phrased as “should we do the kitchen before we list?” The honest answer is almost always no, and it surprises people, so let me explain what is actually going on.

Buyers do not pay you back for taste. They pay you back for removed friction. A renovation that eliminates a reason to say no returns well. A renovation that expresses your preferences competes with theirs, and you rarely win that one. That single distinction explains almost every item on this list.

Ranked by what actually returns in Calgary, with rough cost ranges so you can decide before you spend.

Save this before you call a contractor.

By the time a neighbourhood makes a list of best places to buy, the price already reflects it.The earlier signals are al...
10/16/2026

By the time a neighbourhood makes a list of best places to buy, the price already reflects it.

The earlier signals are all things you can see from the sidewalk. A landlord finally replacing the windows. A bakery taking a storefront that sat empty all year. Permit signs on houses that sold last spring. One street going pending faster than the street behind it.

None of it makes the news. All of it shows up in prices eventually.

If you’re trying to decide where in Calgary to buy next, ask me which streets are showing these right now. I watch this for a living and I’m glad to tell you what I’m seeing.

If you want to buy in Calgary in the new year, the work starts about ninety days before you think it does, and almost no...
10/16/2026

If you want to buy in Calgary in the new year, the work starts about ninety days before you think it does, and almost none of it involves looking at houses.

Most people start in January by browsing. Then they find something, then they scramble for financing, and then they discover that the thing holding them up is a document they could have collected in October while nothing was happening.

Three things are worth handling now. Your last two years of income documentation, gathered in one place rather than assembled in a panic. A real conversation with a lender, which is free and tells you the actual number instead of the one you assumed. And a look at your credit report, early enough that if something on it is wrong you have time to have it corrected, because corrections take weeks and not days.

None of this commits you to anything. It just means that when the right place comes up in February, you are in a position to act rather than a position to explain.

Send this to whoever keeps saying they will buy next year.

An appraiser is not deciding what your home is worth. They are answering a much narrower question, and understanding whi...
10/13/2026

An appraiser is not deciding what your home is worth. They are answering a much narrower question, and understanding which question changes how you read the number.

The question is not “what could this sell for?” It is “does this specific property support this specific loan amount, based on what comparable homes have already sold for?” Already sold. Past tense. In a market that has moved, an appraisal is looking backward by design.

That matters more in a slower market than a fast one. When prices were climbing, appraisals chased and mostly caught up. When the market flattens, the gap between an accepted offer and an appraised value opens up, and somebody has to cover it.

The useful move, if you are selling in Calgary this fall, is to make the appraiser’s job easy. They are working with far less information about your home than you have. A new roof looks like a roof. A rebuilt drainage system looks like a yard. If you do not hand them the list of what you have done, with years and rough costs attached, none of it counts.

And if it comes in low, that is not a verdict. It is one opinion built on old data. You can cover the gap, renegotiate, or order a second opinion where the comparables were genuinely wrong.

DM me the word APPRAISAL if you want the prep list before yours is scheduled.

The table is smaller than you planned and the house is louder than you wanted. That is the good part.Nobody’s Thanksgivi...
10/12/2026

The table is smaller than you planned and the house is louder than you wanted. That is the good part.

Nobody’s Thanksgiving looks like the version in the magazine. Somebody is late. The oven timing does not work out. There is a folding chair at the end that everybody pretends is a real chair. And every year the people who were here are the thing you remember, not the room they were in.

I get to see a lot of houses. The ones people love are almost never the ones that photographed best. They are the ones where something happened.

Happy Thanksgiving from my house to yours. Enjoy the loud part.

You do not have to sell your current home to buy the next one, and a lot of people never run the numbers on keeping it b...
10/11/2026

You do not have to sell your current home to buy the next one, and a lot of people never run the numbers on keeping it because they assume the answer is no.

Sometimes the answer is no. A property that does not cover its costs while tying up your equity and your borrowing capacity is not an investment, it is a second job with a mortgage attached. But the reflex to sell automatically costs some people a property they could not buy again today at any price.

This is a math question with about six inputs, and most people run two of them and stop. What the rent actually is, not what you hope it is. What it costs to hold, including the months it sits empty and the furnace that will fail eventually. What keeping it does to your ability to qualify for the next place, which is the input people forget entirely.

Swipe through for the full calculation, in the order that matters.

Save this before you list the house you are leaving.

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115-8820 Blackfoot Trail SE
Calgary, AB
T2W4B4

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