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-- Photography and mint sauce courtesy of the lovely and multitalented Pandora...

Ottawa Housing Market: Up or Down?

The spring housing market is upon us, and I have some friends who are now looking to buy property, and I thought I’d turn this discussion to thoughts on Ottawa’s real-estate market.

Garth Turner, who has just published, “The Greater Fool: The Troubled Future of Real Estate” says no-one should be buying a home now. Others disagree. Loads of economic forecasters say the market will keep rising, although perhaps slower than before. Others say we could be in a condo bubble. Others that condos are solid because of our aging population base. Others say the U.S. economic meltdown will soon hurt our own housing prices. I also find myself wondering about all those people who rushed, as speculators, to buy in Calgary/Edmonton. Forecasts now are that these markets have flat-lined.

It’s a gamble. An old house on my street (Central Ottawa) just sold for well over $500,000, and I thought it was worth about $350,000. These new owners must think it’s worth it.
Well, for those of you who want to buy, but really, really don’t want to lose money – and are not made of it -- here’s my thoughts (okay, I’m no expert, but nonetheless):

First, don’t go into the suburbs. Everyone’s into minimizing their carbon footprints, and that means inner-city neighbourhoods are in. For several years now the city core neighbourhoods have been climbing in value faster than the outlying areas, and I think this trend will continue and intensify. (Besides, studies tell us that suburb life makes people fat and a little less happy than they would have been, country homes excluded).

Second: if you can at all manage it, buy a house that actually has a yard. There are $600,000 properties out there with no yard, and there are $300,000 ones with beautiful back yards. As the city grows, that urban yard will become much more valuable, plus it gives you room to expand (when you can afford it) without having to move.

Third: If you must buy a condo, see #1 and be even more stringent. That’s uber-urban core, and by this I also mean the hip-urban core of areas like Westboro and the Glebe. Places where there’s not a lot of crappy homes/old warehouses that could get torn down for future condos to compete with yours (and glut the market). I’d say, make sure your condo is within a 10 minute walking distance to three coffee shops. Let’s say that two will suffice if said condo is also within a five minute walk to water.

Fourth: Try not to be directly on a busy street. Don’t buy on Main St., or Parkdale, or Holland, or Scott, if you can avoid it. It might seem like a good deal now, but it’ll be hard to sell in the future, especially if there’s a downturn, plus all that carbon-monoxide and extra stress will take years off your life. Not a good deal.

Fifth: Don’t buy somewhere where you can clearly hear the Queensway hum. Again, it’s not just noise pollution, it’s also that carbon monoxide stuff taking years off your life.

Sixth: Do buy in the “annex” neighbourhoods, the poorer cousins to the rich ones. So: Dow’s Lake, Bronson-West/Little Italy/Hintonburg (Mechanicsville), which annex the Glebe and Wellington Village/Westboro. Preferably seek out a neighbourhood that has a cool and already vibrant “High Street”. A main drag that looks like it could develop further. For the strong-willed and smaller budgeted, I’d also suggest Vanier, but close to Beechwood, not MacArthur.

What do you think, are prices going up or down? What Ottawa neighbourhoods are the best ones to buy into now?

A brief celebratory interlude

This week has been afflicted marked with a number of small, intimate celebrations of an unspecified annual observance for an unspecified member of the Elgin Street Irregulars. Let me put this into perspective by stating that when you've been running around sticking your semimythical nose into things for the number of millenia that I have, multiplying all of the person-years by seven to arrive at a rough canine equivalent doesn't bear thinking about. So we won't.

But it would be remiss of me not to thank all who joined me to balm the abrasions and toast the small victories of another year. A big howl-out to the IO, Audrey, Aggie, 4th Dwarf, Pandora, the Chair, Conch Shell, Harmony, Painted Stick and Zoom. And especially to Woodsy the wood elf, who, when I said I'd like nothing better than a chocolate-point Siamese cat, got it mostly right. It seems to be very similar to white chocolate, and it does look sorta like a cat. One with very oddly fixed pink-and-purple eyes. And may I say, it's soooo beeeyootiful!!!! Ahem. Thank you. As you were.

A modest proposal

This has been the winter of my discontent. Apparently, I'm not alone in this feeling. But it's not just winter. At our last emergency meeting the Irregulars voted to support Larry O'Brien in the belief that this will be good for our karma. Would it be bad karma to point out that there was vociferous undocumented dissent during that debate -- namely, mine?

But noooo. Everybody ignores the damn doggie. And now look at us. Having huge amounts of trouble figuring out what the hell the guy is good for, so we can 'support' him without messing up our already-tottery karmic imbalance even further. And we're not the only ones.

Yet, strangely, I believe I have found a solution that may be able to satisfy us all, the fluffy-bunny supportive types, as well as (ahem) any semimythical totemic animistic sorts who hearken back to older, possibly harsher spiritual systems. (I have to say that considering that Easter originally celebrated nailing a guy to a board, and these days is an excuse for rendering joltingly-gratuitous violence unto Marshmallow PEEPs®, any claims that my roots are uncivilized and backward seem a tad blinkered.)

When I took the problem to a longtime semimythical totemic animistic friend of mine from my old stomping grounds back west, he went straight to the nut: "You're looking for a use for this guy so you can support him in good conscience, right? And winter's been going on way too long, right? So multitask. Make him a human sacrifice to the spirit of winter, so it'll screw off and let spring back in. And the bonfire warms everybody up in the meantime."

Is this guy good or what?

12 other Mayors with problems

Ontario

• Carleton Place Mayor Paul Dulmage has had a private charge issued against him dismissed after a businessman said the mayor threatened to hunt him down like a dog.

USA

• Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is hanging on for his political life after the revelation that, among 14,000 text messages between him and his chief of staff Christine Beatty, there was evidence of an extramarital affair between the pair -- evidence that contradicts his sworn statements in a whistleblower case brought by former police officers that ended in $9 million in damages against the city.
• Former Leighton, Alabama, Mayor Robert Ricks was sentenced to 12 months probation following his September conviction on federal extortion charges.
• The mayor of Berryville, Arkansas, Timothy Ray McKinney, was arrested and booked into the Carroll County Jail early Sunday morning; charged with speeding, driving while intoxicated, and possession of a controlled substance. He was released on bond early Sunday afternoon.
• Alice, Texas Mayor Grace Saenz-Lopez resigned because of a custody dispute over a Shih Tzu named Puddles. Saenz-Lopez insists she didn't steal her neighbor's pooch.
• Arlington, Oregon mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist who once stripped to her underwear and posed on a fire truck has been stripped of her office.
  
• Bath, New Jersey Mayor David D. Mosey was charged with recklessly endangering another person, reckless driving, careless driving and other motor vehicle violations after it was reported he repeatedly crashed into another vehicle that drifted into his lane while the Mayor was on his way to take a stress test.
• Police arrested the Mayor of Samson, Alabama, Clay Mchugh King, Friday after he allegedly confronted and stabbed a 44-year-old man he found with his wife.

Spain

• Juan Millán, the Socialist Mayor of the small Málaga village of La Viñuela, faces a possible 18 months in prison in connection with three building licences, in a case where he is charged with perversion of the course of justice and also faces a 17 month ban from public office.
• The former Mayor of the Málaga village of Cómpeta, the ex Partido Popular Mayor, Leovigildo López, has been banned from any public office position for the next seven years, in a sentence from criminal court No. 1 in the provincial capital which has found him guilty of planning crimes.

Republic of Kalmykia

• Kalmykia's prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Rady Burulov, the mayor of the republic's capital, Elista, on allegations that his administration overpaid for goods purchased from a company owned by his parents.

United Kingdom

• The mayor of Pembroke, Wales, Keith McNiffe is to appear in court accused of fraudulently claiming thousands of pounds in disability benefits while refereeing at football matches in west Wales.

Previously: Mayors with Swagger