Toronto Condo and Real Estate Blog

This is the final opportunity for you to purchase a spectacular Trump Toronto residence or hotel condominium suite at pre-construction prices!

Construction plans for Canada’s first historic Trump property will soon be announced. Now is the time to act if you want to maximize your investment potential. Prices have risen over 5% since June, and will rise considerably once construction begins.

The Residences start at 1,299 square feet and are currently priced from $1,025,000. Hotel condominiums from the upper $700,000’s (CAD).

This is the only Trump real estate investment opportunity in Canada and an opportunity I wouldn’t want you to miss. With over $200-million now sold at Trump Toronto, the window of opportunity for you to buy at pre-construction pricing will soon be closing.

Similar Trump International properties have historically had substantial equity growth - setting the pace of local price appreciation and often exceeding other investment vehicles.

Pre-construction buyers at Trump International Hotel & Tower, Chicago (now under construction) saw their initial purchase values rise over 90% in just 12 months. Currently, prices at Trump Chicago have appreciated to over $1,250 per square foot.

Located in the heart of downtown Toronto’s vibrant financial and entertainment districts, the 70-storey Trump International Hotel & Tower, Toronto will be the most luxurious residential building in Canada when completed.

Featuring unrivalled five-star quality, services and amenities that only a Trump property can deliver, this elegant building will become the place to live and stay in Canada’s premier city.

Managed by the Trump Organization, Trump International Hotel & Tower is one of the most highly regarded and awarded hotel brands in the world. Condé Nast Traveler and Travel + Leisure Magazines have consistently ranked my New York property #1 for business travelers in North America.

Whether your purchase is for personal or corporate use, or as an investment, you will become part of the prestigious ensemble of Trump properties - known throughout the world for exceptionally high standards of living. In fact, investors from over 20 countries have already purchased suites at Trump Toronto.

I am sure you will find Trump International Hotel & Tower, Toronto as fabulous as I do. I encourage you to contact the Trump Toronto sales office soon to take advantage of this spectacular opportunity to own a Trump property before pre-construction pricing ends.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information

Excerpt from an article by Bob Aaron

Buying and living in a house which was the scene of a murder or suicide is not everyone’s cup of tea, but for some people, living in a tainted house is simply not an issue.

Last month, the would-be buyer of the house where child model JonBenet Ramsey was murdered lost out on his plans to move into the $1.7 million property when it was taken off the market following the arrest of John Mark Karr.

In July, Mike Hatter had signed an offer to purchase the 6,866-square foot home where the six-year-old was killed in 1996. Shortly after Karr was arrested in Thailand in August, Hatter got an email from the real estate broker in Boulder, Colo., saying the house was being taken off the market by its current owners who are unrelated to the Ramsey family.

JonBenet’s parents sold the house in 1998 soon after their daughter’s murder. A group of investors purchased the red-brick Tudor-style mansion at 749 15th St. for $650,000, and the house has had four owners since then.

The most recent owners, Tim and Carol Schuller Milner, paid $1.05 million for the house in 2004, but moved out late last year because they could no longer take the pressure of living in the glare of curiosity seekers.

The would-be buyer is not at all bothered by things that go bump in the night. In fact, he seems somewhat fascinated by the whole subject. “I’m the kind of person who likes graveyards and full moons,” he told a reporter.

In the real estate industry, this kind of house is known as stigmatized or tainted. The perception is that the value of the property has been reduced by non-physical, non-scientific, irrational or even superstitious perceptions by buyers.

Colorado realtor Joel Ripmaster has represented the last four owners of the Ramsay home. Last month, he was quoted in USA Today as saying, “It’s stigmatized. It’s always been stigmatized.”

Whether a home has been tainted by being the site of an actual murder, or by the reputation as being haunted, its value may be affected — positively or negatively.

Consider, for example, so-called haunted British castles and guest houses, where tourists flock to spend a night or two in the company of ghostly housemates. Or the bed-and-breakfast in Fall River, Mass., where guests can sleep in the room where Lizzie Borden was accused (and acquitted) of killing her father and stepmother with an axe in 1892.

Usually, however, the value is adversely affected by the property’s reputation.

Ontario has hundreds of homes, condominiums and apartments that were the sites of notorious and even grisly crimes — some private, and some very public. Consider, for example, the site of the now-demolished Bernardo house on Bayview Dr. in St. Catharines, or the site of the Mississauga home (since destroyed by fire) where Christine Demeter was murdered in 1973.

Buyers have many reasons to shun stigmatized real estate, according to Toronto real estate appraiser and educator Barry Lebow. A frequent lecturer on haunted and stigmatized houses in Toronto, Lebow is the former owner of a house that was the site of a messy public suicide.

Read the full article

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Excerpt from an article by Harold Levy - Toronto Star

Ontario’s proposals to protect homeowners from real estate fraud won’t help victims who have lost their homes to identity thieves, because the government-run land titles registration system failed them, critics charge.

“I relied on their system and it failed me,” said Susan Lawrence, a North York widow who lost her century home to identity thieves.

After a news conference held yesterday by Government Services Minster Gerry Phillips, Lawrence was surprised to see no plan to reform “obvious problems” in the unwieldy system to compensate victims like her.

Phillips told reporters that a bill, which he plans to introduce this fall, will cure a glaring defect in Ontario law.

Currently, the law provides that fraudulent property transactions based on bogus mortgages, land transfers, and powers of attorney are considered lawful by the courts as soon as they are registered under the province’s land titles system.

Because of that defect, homeowners may find themselves on the hook for mortgages fraudulently put on their property without their knowledge — instead of the banks and the mortgage companies.

Homeowners may also discover to their horror that they are in danger of losing their properties permanently to people who bought them from criminals without knowing of the fraud.

Other measures in the bill proposed yesterday will give officials the power to suspend or revoke access to the land titles system by suspected real estate fraudsters.

Penalties for real estate fraud under provincial legislation would increase from the current $1,000 to a maximum of $50,000 — in addition to punishment under the Criminal Code.

But the minister made no mention of Ontario’s unwieldy Land Titles Assurance Fund, which exists to compensate people who have suffered financial loss because of errors or fraud in the land titles registration process.

Critics say that homeowners who have been exposed to losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars because a government-run institution did not do its job should not have to spend up to $30,000 on legal fees to recover from the fund or to bring lawsuits against those people who may be responsible for the loss, as is currently the case.

Read the full article

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information