AirBnBs in Toronto

Over the last years Torontonians have increasingly rented out their residences on AirBnB, an online marketplace that enables people to list, find, then rent vacation homes.

For the condo and home owners it can be financially more attractive to rent out short term rather than taking in a long-term tenant. For the paying guests, private residences are usually much more affordable than hotel rooms. On the downside: Complaints through neighbors, trashed places, fines. The hotel industry is losing a lot of money and asks to have more regulations applied .

If you are an owner and rent out your condo/house you can search websites as AirBnB, Couchsurfing, Craigslist, Kijiji to see if your tenant offers your home for short-term rentals.

If you are a potential condo buyer you may want to check the condo declaration and see what it says about restrictions regarding short term rentals.

If you want to purchase a home make sure to check the zoning by-law of your future neighborhood. Most condo units will not allow short term stays and condo boards have started monitoring closer what is happening in their building.

If you own a house or you are in a building that doesn’t ban short-term rentals, make sure to find out how it will affect your insurance if you want to rent out your place. Find out if the required extra insurance will leave you enough to make it worthwhile.

(Sources: Globe and Mail, Metro News)

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Ontario’s Greenbelt

The Greenbelt protects environmentally sensitive land and farmlands in Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe area from urban development. It contains nearly two million acres (800,000 hectares) of land – an area larger than Prince Edward Island – and is the largest and most strongly protected greenbelt in the world.

It extends 325 km from the eastern end of the Oak Ridges Moraine, near Rice Lake, in the east, to the Niagara River in the west.

The greenbelt has also been criticized: The combination of the consistently growing population in the GTA and at the same time the restriction of land supply. As such the Greenbelt is seen as one of the major factors in the continuing surge of house prices in Toronto. The provincial government projects that the area’s population will tip 8.9-million by 2036.

(Sources: The Globe and Mail and Government of Ontario Website)

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Happy Civic Holiday

Or in other words: What on earth are we celebrating? Did you know that Civic Holidays is observed in most but not all provinces, and that each province has a different reason to celebrate it? Some examples:

Alberta: Heritage Day, in honour of diverse Canadian culture and cultures around the world

Nova Scotia: Natal Day, in honour of Halifax’s birthday

Ontario: Emancipation Day, in honour of the end of slavery in the British Empire.

Only in Toronto: Simcoe Day, in honour of the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada

(Source: National Post)

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