Bill John­ston, TREB Pres­i­dent – Toronto Sun

For some peo­ple, one of the most chal­leng­ing aspects of buy­ing a home can be choos­ing from the numer­ous options to help fit their lifestyle. From a con­do­minium in the heart of the city to a farm set amongst rolling hills, from life on an island to a home near ski slope, few world cities can boast the eclec­tic mix of hous­ing that the Greater Toronto Area offers.

This spec­trum of choices means that it’s par­tic­u­larly impor­tant to use the ser­vices of a REALTOR® to care­fully iden­tify a home that is best suited to fit your lifestyle.

Start by sign­ing a Buyer Agency Agree­ment, the BRA helps out­line your REALTOR’s® com­mit­ment to rep­re­sent your best inter­ests by work­ing exclu­sively on your behalf for a des­ig­nated period of time.

A REALTOR’s® direct access to a num­ber of impor­tant data­bases may help you iden­tify all of your options.

If you pre­fer a home in an estab­lished com­mu­nity, your REALTOR® can use the Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice® (MLS) to search for thou­sands of avail­able prop­er­ties, which are dis­played in real time, as soon as they are listed for sale.

Your REALTOR® may also reg­is­ter your cri­te­ria in the Toronto Real Estate Board’s Buyer Reg­istry Ser­vice (BRS). It is a password-protected data­base in which your per­sonal infor­ma­tion is only acces­si­ble to your REALTOR®. While you can receive reg­u­lar email noti­fi­ca­tions on homes that match your spec­i­fi­ca­tions, com­mu­ni­ca­tion between buy­ers’ and sell­ers’ REALTORS® who use the BRS can occur even faster.

Your REALTOR® may even be aware of soon-to-be avail­able prop­er­ties through their net­work of con­tacts in the community.

Be sure to visit www​.BRAFirst​.ca for more infor­ma­tion on the Buyer Rep­re­sen­ta­tion Agreement.

If a brand new home is what you have in mind, your REALTOR® can advise as to new home con­struc­tion options through­out Greater Toronto Area using the Real­net Canada data­base. Devel­op­ments can be searched by hous­ing type, loca­tion, price range and a num­ber of other spe­cific criteria.

Once you have selected a few options, your REALTOR® can gather infor­ma­tion that can be key to your decision-making like any price adjust­ments that have occurred and the property’s num­ber of days on the mar­ket. They can also use the MLS® to help you eval­u­ate ask­ing prices based on the infor­ma­tion of other prop­er­ties recently sold in the area.

In fact, regard­less of whether it was ever avail­able on the MLS®, your REALTOR® can advise on a property’s pre­vi­ous sold price by access­ing their link to Teranet’s land reg­istry sys­tem. This data­base con­tains other key infor­ma­tion as well, like neigh­bour­hood demo­graphic pro­files, aer­ial views and land surveys.

Insight into other specifics like assessed val­ues, a home’s age, and square footage can also be gleaned using the Munic­i­pal Prop­erty Assess­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (MPAC) database.

By weigh­ing all of these fac­tors you can develop a focused pur­suit of your per­fect home and with a REALTOR’s® expert nego­ti­at­ing skills, it could be yours sooner than you think.

Regard­less of whether you choose new or resale, every mar­ket is dif­fer­ent be sure to con­tact a REALTOR®. Their skills and exper­tise may give you a win­ning advan­tage and help find the right home for you.

———————————————————————————————————————
Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
———————————————————————————————————————

buyer rep­re­sen­ta­tion agree­ment and new construction

Related posts:

1. For the Buyer Your Real­tor can use the Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice (MLS) to…
2. Use the ser­vices of a Real­tor This spec­trum of choices means that it’s par­tic­u­larly impor­tant to…
3. A case for sus­tain­able home price growth A bet­ter way of deter­min­ing if the cur­rent aver­age home…
4. Realtor’s access to data­bases can assist with home search Regard­less of whether you’re a first-timer or a sea­soned homebuyer,…
5. GTA home sales down slightly in 2010 Greater Toronto Real­tors sold 1% fewer homes in 2010 versus…