A research conducted by Sotheby’s International Realty US reveals that ‘new affluent’ consumers are more self-reliant than established consumers when it comes to looking to buy or sell property. This has revolutionised the real estate market; stirring agents to think out of the box to provide more personalised services and amenities, which this new global band of rich ultras have not looked for or thought of themselves.

Who is the new affluent consumer?

New affluent consumers are generally young and urban. Their employment profile aligns with their educational qualifications and achievements. Most affluent households have multiple earners and homeownership is extremely important for them in order to be affluent.

The new affluent are technology savvy and conduct their own research when purchasing or selling a property. Therefore, real estate agents have to alter their traditional role in order to keep up. The report suggests that there has been a considerable decrease in the use of real estate associates by new affluent consumers when selling their properties as compared to established consumers.

In 2017, only 26 per cent of new affluent used the services of a real estate agent while 64 per cent of established affluent seek the expertise of real estate agents.  Similarly, when buying a property, 28 per cent of new affluent reported using professional services in contrast to 72 per cent of established affluent. This is because this group is highly confident and motivated as well as independent when it comes to tasks being accomplished.

In addition, they are also getting help from technology. In the age of digital advancement real estate websites like Knock, REDFIN, Opendoor, Zillow, realtor.com, etc. have made the work of real estate agents extremely challenging especially when the answers to most of your solutions are just a few clicks away.

What is important to the new affluent consumer?

The study reveals three important factors that determine the decision of new affluent consumers when selecting an individual or company for buying or selling property. These factors are brand, attentive service, and use of latest technology. When it comes to brand these consumers want to experience something that is highly worth their time to justify their spending. They want the services and amenities to be memorable. That means that a real estate agent should concentrate on selling the experience rather than products.

This wil also make real estate agents work harder to provide personalised services that cater to one’s needs and requirements, creating a niche for themselves in regards to the services they are providing to their clients. Here, active learning comes to play as the aim is to make it right the first time, saving the client’s time and money and not make them look at properties, which do not match their lifestyle at all.

The research also reveals that the new affluent consider Sotheby’s International Realty as a brand that stands apart from other real estate brands. In fact, Sotheby’s International Realty is considered a highly prestigious commodity outside the real estate arena. It ranks fairly high when compared to Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, Cartier… New Affluent also consider Sotheby’s International Realty as luxurious, high quality, exclusive, classic and global. The research suggested that the company is able to build a long lasting connection with the new affluent group because of the customised services they provide. The study further states 27 per cent of consumers who have homes over $1 million (US) avail the services of Sotheby’s International Realty.

The new affluent prefers experiences over products

Canadian affluent consumers

From the Canadian perspective, Richard Silver, Sales Representative and Senior Vice President-Sales at Sotheby’s International Realty Canada states that there are some traits common to all new affluent consumers.

Our new affluent clients prefer shorter commutes; choosing to spend more family time and less time travelling. They insist on good schools and easy access to restaurant, shops and entertainment.

Good real estate agents should be aware of some of their clientele needs and requirements even before they meet.

Take for example an agent today has to be keenly aware of schools, their ratings as well as proximity to playgrounds and other family amenities. They should know clients with children consider parenting their top most priority. In this case agents should start their neighbourhood search with this important nugget in mind.

Silver also notes that the new affluent are very busy people and that is why it is imperative that a thorough research be conducted before presenting the properties to them.

Most of our new affluent are young couples who are both motivated to work and have careers. If they are stay-at-home parents, they are equally busy in their daily chores. They are highly determined and will challenge the most seasoned agent in getting what they desire. These are the traits of about half of our clientele.

Silver adds that their clients are technologically sophisticated and like using different types of gadgets and online resources to get information.

This is why it is more important than ever for an associate to speak their language and communicate with them at their level of digital suaveness. Real estate agents should continuously educate themselves of latest devices and gizmos that are being used in transmitting information to the clients faster and conveniently.

The new affluent are born in the age of digital revolution, they feast on information, which they get on the internet and use different tools to remain online 24/7. This band of social media savvy are aware of new trends and innovations in real estate as well also other sectors compared to established affluent. In the world of start-ups, people are not shy of taking risks and doing things by themselves. The new affluent have embraced this mantra and with technology on their side, businesses have to be on top of their game while catering to this section of clientele.

PS00KV

Let Jim Burtnick give you a tour of Toronto’s Lawrence Park neighbourhood.

If you work in the city and you’re looking for a very family friendly neighbourhood, not too pretentious, with great public schools and private schools, and a short commute to Downtown – Lawrence Park is for you.

Yollanda Zhang is the founder and the leader of Panda Mandarin, a Mandarin school for children and adults in mid-town Toronto. Panda Mandarin is unique in that it aims to make the language fun, engaging, and authentic. Zhang’s newest venture is Girl.Strong., a girl empowerment program for young girls to gain confidence and to take charge. Girl.Strong. is a project that is inspired by Zhang’s late grandmother, who was her role model and continues to be her muse.

What’s your connection to Toronto?

I immigrated with my parents from China to Toronto in 1990. I went to engineering school and worked in the corporate world for a few years. Afterwards, I decided to make a career switch to teaching math and physics in high school. I made another career switch into entrepreneurship when I started Panda Mandarin in mid-town Toronto. I chose mid-town Toronto because I live here with my husband and daughter. My husband and I love the area and really wanted our daughter to learn Mandarin in the community.

What makes Panda Mandarin unique compared to other Mandarin schools?

We can summarize our teaching methodology in three words: fun, engaging, and authentic. When we train our teachers, we tell them that “before you teach this lesson, you need to look at it through the eyes of the child and actually see if they would have fun and feel engaged. If you feel that they wouldn’t, you need to re-examine your methodology and make it fun and engaging.”

Additionally, for us, authentic means giving students things that they can actually use. From my husband’s and my own experience, we were tortured with memorizing Chinese poems in our Chinese schools, and I often wondered why these schools spent so much time teaching us these things we would hardly ever use. Now, I understand the cultural relevance, and how it’s great for kids to learn and stay connected to the heritage. However, it’s still really hard for children to learn a language when memorizing poetry is a big part of the curriculum. For Panda Mandarin, it’s very important to teach children language that they can actually use. We’ve heard stories of our students and their families going to Asia and having their child’s Mandarin help the family during the trip. That’s what we’re really proud of.

Why is Mandarin becoming more important in Canadian society?

There are a few different reasons. First, many first-generation Chinese-Canadians can’t speak their heritage language anymore, so we want our kids to learn it. The second reason is that China is becoming a huge economic power and there’s a lot of attention on how this will affect the job market going forward. So speaking Mandarin can increase one’s employability. The third reason is that learning a second language is really good for children. Studies show that learning tonal languages—like Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese—can unlock a part of the child’s brain that no other learning of languages can do. The more of a child’s brain that can be developed through different activities, the better it is for their future learning. Studies have also shown that people who can speak two or more languages have a lower chance of developing Alzheimer’s.

The pictures and videos on the Panda Mandarin website show that your student body is very multi-cultural. Where do non-Chinese parents find value in their children learning Mandarin?

The key benefit that parents find is that we allow children to see the world through a different lens. Anytime we give a child or person a chance to speak a new language, they gain access to a whole new world. Panda Mandarin gives students the tools to access this new world. Because Toronto is so multicultural, it’s easy for our students to go to a Chinese restaurant and order in Mandarin, and instantly, they’re building relationships that they wouldn’t have without these language skills. Parents are very proud of this and so are we.

Of all the Panda Mandarin classes, do you have a favourite?

How do you pick a favourite child? It’s really hard to pick a favourite mainly because each class is so different. For example, the corporate program, which we taught at Sotheby’s, is a really fun experience because the participants are amazing people. Teaching children is a totally different thing. They see the world through such fresh eyes. And for us to have the experience of seeing it with them is incredible.

At the moment, we’re launching a new program to focus on girl empowerment. It’s called Girl. Strong. I can easily say that this program is one of my favourites right now because I’ve spent so much time getting it off the ground. Girl. Strong. is like my baby in its infancy stage whereas all the other programs are more mature and able to function on their own.

Girl. Strong. is inspired by your grandmother. Can you elaborate on your relationship with her and exactly how she inspired Girl. Strong.?

My grandmother raised me from almost the day I was born until I was three-and-a-half years old. She had a very tough upbringing, and it really shaped who she became. She was always told that she wasn’t smart and that she was fat. She really didn’t have any positive role models in her life other than her mother who was often away trying to make a living. As a result, she became socially withdrawn and had really low self-esteem. But in reality, she had had so many accomplishments in her life. She was very smart and hardworking and patient. She just didn’t see that in herself.

Yollanda learning to use the abacus with grandma.

I thought that it’s incredibly unfortunate for girls now to feel the same way. Even girls who live in privileged communities don’t always see themselves positively. I’ve interviewed many moms and daughters to launch this program, and I realized so much of what I saw in my grandmother might be happening to girls in my own community. I really want to do what I can and use the skills and experiences that I have—coming from a male-dominated engineering sector—to offer girls in the community the ability to live limitless lives. I think this could be an incredible gift that I could give.

Girl. Strong. focuses a lot on the mother-daughter relationship. Why is that and why do you feel that the mother-daughter relationship is important for female empowerment?

I think it really comes from the research that a girl’s (or any person’s for that matter) view of the world is shaped by the time that they’re 14. In a girl’s early life, her time is spent with her mom as the primary role model. If a girl’s relationship and foundation with that primary role model is not a positive one or if it has underlying issues, it could really impact the way a girl views the world at large.

From personal experience, I had experienced an attachment injury because I was raised exclusively from a young age by my grandparents, and it was challenging getting over that. My mom and I had to work hard to rebuild some missing pieces of our relationship, even if the event happened at a young age. This gave me a really unique perspective on the importance of mother-daughter relationships, and it also gave me a sense of urgency and importance in this relationship. If you don’t deal with it earlier on, when you get older, harder issues will accumulate to prevent your relationship from flourishing. The mother-daughter relationship is always known as the most beautiful but complicated relationship.

Yollanda with her daughter

Going from a high school teacher, with a secure income and a legendary pension, to an entrepreneur, how did you feel about this transition?

I have to fully admit that going from teaching to entrepreneurship has been really hard. It’s not something that I thought would be so hard to overcome. I’ve always been a successful professional and part of people’s judgments of a successful professional is that they make a good living. So for me, it has been a bit of an identity issue. I’m not earning the level of income that I used to earn, but as an entrepreneur, I’m paid in different ways—for example, I have more flexibility to volunteer at my daughter’s school or to pick her up every day. I think the hardest part of this transition is that identity issue. I’m no longer that successful individual who’s contributing to my family financially. However, my husband is super supportive—he has never cared about my reduced income. I sometimes fantasize about going back to my full-time job and making a stable income and pension, but I think a lot of entrepreneurs go through this.

Panda Mandarin Team

In your Globe and Mail article, Lost in Translation, you’ve expressed frustration about the lack of emphasis on integrating an international language in the Canadian school system. What is the first step you’d like to see in the Ontario education system in accommodating students from different linguistic backgrounds?

If I had a magic wand that could make some significant changes, I would love to have international languages offered as immersion languages in public schools the way French is. Since this article was published two years ago, nothing has really changed. These laws are really difficult to modify, so I know no magic wand can change laws immediately. But perhaps immediately, they can look at their funding model to see if there’s a better way to integrate heritage languages, like Mandarin, into day-school curriculum. Since students would also learn with their peers in a familiar school environment, it makes a big difference with acceptance. I think is more achievable than a full immersion model and will make a huge impact on language retention and accessibility.

AZ00KV

Once upon a time there were many little creeks and streams meandering through the area we now call Toronto. As the city grew, and sanitation standards rose, these waterways became buried; built over and forced into culverts, they were gradually forgotten. Their rediscovery began in 1995, when Helen Mills started the Lost Rivers walks – a joint project between the Toronto Green Community and the Toronto Field Naturalists that sought to retrace the old creeks through a series of guided walks. Over 2 decades later, Mills is still leading walks and working to make Toronto a greener, more sustainable city.

You came to Canada from South Africa when you were in your teens. How did Toronto seem to you when you first moved here?

Well, I came first to Calgary, and that was kind of like dying and going to Hell after Hell froze over, you know? Coming from a warm country… But three years later we came to Toronto, which – having been treated to the Calgary weather for three years, and it was the three coldest years in the previous one hundred years – Toronto was like moving to Florida. It was really wonderful. I very quickly felt at home in Toronto.

You encountered Toronto’s lost rivers soon after you moved here.

We were up near Eglinton, and I used to go to the local park – Eglinton Park – to swim because it was boiling hot when we landed. And I just had the strangest feeling at that park… There was just this little ripple of awareness about something’s wrong with this picture. What is this weird squared off depression, with flat playing fields at the bottom? It was subconscious almost subliminal. And then I just filed it away ‘oh that’s just how Toronto is’. I had many of those experiences. The same thing at Ramsden Park and Christie Pitts. Just a feeling of discomfort or ripple of awareness about something about the structure of that landscape was a bit disturbing. And then, when I finally discovered that in fact, these parks are on buried creeks where there were either brickyards or sand and gravel quarries, everything fell into place, you know?

Eglinton Park

Eglinton Park

Eglinton Park

Eglinton Park

You ran across lost waterways without knowing what they were for years. How did you finally find out about them?

When I was doing my first-year geography lab about rivers, physiography and urban form, I happened to walk through the faculty of architecture at U of T, and saw this exhibition that superimposed the rivers on the city grid, and it was just this huge moment of recognition and I was horrified, of course. I was very sorry – even though I understood that this is good; we don’t have cholera, right? There’s lots of places around that would really love not to have cholera and would like to have sanitation and clean water to drink. But it was kind of a devastating thing to experience. That these [rivers] were just gone.

Would you say that you were an environmentalist back then?

Let’s just say that when I was 15, I became horrified about the state of the world and the environment. And I wanted – even at that early age – to put wheat between the streetcar tracks on Queen Street. I dreamed of green cities and doing something, but I didn’t feel that I really had any tools. I was almost paralyzed by depression and dread at the situation in the world. So when I went back to university in my 30s, and I did physical geography and botany, it gave me a handle, gave me something where I had enough knowledge that I felt I could do something.

Don Valley

Don Valley

Don Valley

And that ‘something’ became the Lost Rivers Walks?

I learned about the lost rivers and I wanted to do environmental art and do blue lines along the roads and up over the buildings and down the other side. And name them, and bring them to the surface of people’s awareness, and that sat on my back burner for ten years. Then one day I saw this hokey little green poster in Pusateri’s, saying ‘The North Toronto Green Community: come to a community meeting. Tell us your dreams’. And I stopped and turned around three times and said ‘that’s for me’, and off I trotted to this meeting – which oddly enough was facilitated by Kathleen Wynne.

There were about 70 people there on a bitterly cold February night, and I got into a group talking about water, and I said “Well I think we’re sitting on a buried creek” – which we were, it was Eglinton Park – “and we should figure out where our creeks are“. And basically the Green Community handed me a license to carry out my dreams. And it morphed into the Lost Rivers walks very quickly.

You did a few garden-related projects, as well?

I was also very involved in getting the first community garden going in Eglinton park, and then a few years later helped to found the Green Garden Visit, which was a little home eco visit for people. We’d look at your garden through the lens of water waste, energy, food, etc, and help you to have a more eco-friendly garden. That morphed into a little social enterprise called Green Gardeners Community Collaborative that spun off from the Green Community.

Actually, the gardening has been a continuous thing alongside Lost Rivers, and there’s an obvious connection, because a river is not just a blue line on a map. It’s a whole matrix, a mosaic of landscape uses in the watershed surrounding the river. And everything you do anywhere in that watershed has an impact on the river. So really, to solve our water problems, we have to go right back to the watershed and begin to change the fabric of the city. Rain gardens are one simple thing that an individual can do to that can make a very big difference in the water cycle – if enough people do it.

Click on the photo to get to the interactive map!

What were the first Lost Rivers walks like?

Kind of like they are now… but longer. I think on the first walk there was a geologist, a local historian, Peter Hare – who later did the Lost River website, and had been involved in the Royal Commission on the waterfront and the Don council. He’s a forester. And members of the Toronto Green Community and the Toronto Field Naturalists. And the amazing thing is, there were 35 people on that walk. No idea where they came from but they just have never stopped coming.

Have the walks changed much since then?

They’re evolving through the Rivers Rising Ambassadors. The idea for Rivers Rising is to bring together the Indigenous community and the Newcomer community, in the framework of lost rivers and community gardens, and culture and story-telling and food. Which sounds like a mouthful, but you know, you can think of the Lost Rivers as a sort of organizing principle. As you walk along them, you may find gardens, you may find restaurants, you may find something else, and you definitely will find people who bring their stories and their connections.

Solstice walk taken near Evergreen Brick works

The number of people on a walk can vary quite a bit, and apparently averages about 33. Can you describe a particular walk that really took off in popularity?

We used to walk along Highland Creek every year and this wonderful engineer from the City used to explain the work he was doing in restoration on the river, because it was ripped apart in a flood quite a few years ago – I think it was 2005. And then one year there were salmon! So the fish ladder that he built had worked. And for the next year we said ‘come see the salmon run on Highland Creek’, and there were fifty people. And the next year there were a hundred and fifty people, and the next year there were five hundred people, and it just kept growing.

One year there were over a thousand people that did the walk. And then they stopped doing that format altogether, and now it’s a festival with the TRCA and park people involved, and thousands of people go to that. They have a fish expert, and they bring in a frozen salmon just in case there isn’t areal one available that day. And they do the little fish talk. But people just love coming and running by the river and looking for the salmon.

You’ve traveled a fair bit. Have you compared the lost rivers in any of the other cities you’ve visited?

I’m fascinated by the fact that this Lost Rivers thing is now a phenomenon. All over the world, people are looking for their lost rivers and finding them. It’s a common characteristic with any large city. Even Cape Town has some lost rivers that they’ve found. And London, and wherever you go, somebody’s probably looking for a lost river.

Are there any policy changes you’d like to see applied to dealing with Toronto’s waterways?

There’s a huge question! Well, you know, I think it took us two hundred years to mess up our rivers. I think we need a 200 year plan to undo the harm we’ve done. And by that I don’t necessarily mean that we’ll dig up the Eaton Centre to get Taddle Creek back, but that we will start to learn from nature, and model our practices in the city on natural cycles, and use closed loops in our thinking about water and energy and waste.

You’ve defined ‘watershed thinking’ on the Lost River website as “recognizing the relationship between humans and their natural environment”. Should this be taught in schools?

It is taught in schools. It’s in the public school curriculum. But the funny thing is, it doesn’t seem to go in very much. It’s interesting. And I can tell you from my own experience, the word ‘watershed’ doesn’t mean anything to people. And even if you define it, we’re so disconnected from landscape that it’s very hard for people to apply that idea in the context of the city.

Perhaps the really difficult trick is getting people to care.

They only have to change their behavior. They actually don’t have to care. There’s an interesting idea that attitudes actually follow behavior. If you change one small behavior, it sets a snowball going of bigger and bigger attitude changes and engagement. So whatever that small thing is – whether it’s getting a blue box or planting a tree or turning off the tap when you brush your teeth – it’s an action. And attitudes and feelings follow the action, not the other way around. That’s one theory, and I think there’s a lot to be said for that.

I do think that there is a kind of environmental religion, and we’re all missionaries in our own way, right? And I’m not at all sure that the environmental religion approach works very well.

I think what works is when people are engaged and connected with their neighbours, and where there’s a sense of community and belonging and role models around them and it becomes a thing. Fashion works really well. People are engaged with fashion, and fashions, and trends, and they want to be on trend.

When you talk about an ‘environmental religion’ and missionaries, does that mean that environmentalists can come across as self-righteous and preachy?

Yeah. You know what? I actually had a friend – when I was first involved in the Green Community – and she was completely dumbfounded, because she did have that image of the angry environmentalist: confrontational, fighting the government, protesting to say something. And then she was around the Green Community, and it was just these happy people, being in a community and doing things that felt wonderful – like gardening and walking. And it was the positiveness of it that really really blew her away, because she just had such a preconception of environmentalists as being very judgmental and serious.

I think one of the things that drew me to the Green Community model is that it is based on the idea of community-based environmental action that relates to people’s actual needs in the neighbourhoods where they live. And that’s a very different model.

I think environmentalism is perceived as a set of puritanical religious behaviors that are painful to implement. ‘Somebody’s going to take my car away! Oh my God! I can’t possibly live without it!’ And I actually think that what works is when people are engaged in a positive way with something that moves them… that this peer engagement – I don’t want to say pressure, because I think pressure is the thing that doesn’t work – but the joy works. A sense of community works. The love between neighbours works.

Yellow Creek

Yellow Creek

Is this where the Lost River Walks come in?

I do believe that something does happen with Lost River walks, even though they probably attract, on balance, a pre-converted audience, but I think it’s a profound experience. There’s something about walking, and being together in a group, and being aware of what’s around you and being contemplative and thoughtful. There’s a very profound deep thing that goes back to the dawn of humanity; two legs, right? We’ve been wandering around the Earth in little groups forever, so it’s a kind of fundamental thing that people do. And it is a way of being in the environment that I think is valuable in and of itself. And we don’t get enough of it. Especially kids with their computers.

Did you ever get around to doing environmental art?

We did once. We painted all the lost rivers between the lake and the former boundary of the old city of Toronto on Yonge, when Yonge street was closed for Yonge 200. There’s a bunch of poets who we call the Lost River poets, and they lead poetry walks on the rivers, which is a profound and very different experience. Very ecstatic. And we’ve done the walks with music and walks with people painting on a canvass, activities like carrying water and then pouring it into the lake. So yeah, we’ve dabbled in all that stuff. With kids we’ve done graffiti at the Mud Creek where it goes underneath the 401 – on the wall of the 401.

Do you have any advice for people feeling powerless in the face of the world’s many environmental problems?

Start close to home. And actually, if you want to start a neighbourhood Green Community group, there’s a new network of neighbourhood green communities, which is a great way to start, come to think of it.

Do you think people often overlook the small, simple actions because they don’t seem big or meaningful enough?

I actually think that the young people get it more than the older people. One of the most wonderful things for me is being around the young people who are in the environmental community. It’s mind-blowing. They are the most amazing human beings. And I think they really do get it. Partly, you know, a lot of them have studied Environmental Studies, so they understand the thinking behind ‘local’ and ‘neighbourhood’. And again, I think local is super trendy. People really understand that now.

JNBLKV

New developments in Toronto and the GTA are filled with contemporary, cookie-cutter designs. While many Torontonians appreciate the aesthetics, and often the relatively lower costs of modern residences, others want a home with the physique of a different era.

Heritage homes are residential properties that the government, usually at the municipal level, designates as a “special heritage interest”, as part of the Ontario Heritage Act. Within the act, PART IV provides protection to individual properties and PART V provides protection for whole areas called Heritage Conservation Districts (HCD). The main purpose of the Ontario Heritage Act is to give the different levels of government the power to preserve Ontario’s and Canada’s heritage.

The Toronto Preservation Board in collaboration with the Heritage Preservation Services research which buildings to protect. After they suggest a building or area, a city council votes on whether to give it heritage status. And they follow a few criteria to decide whether or not a building qualifies. To qualify, a building must:

• be rare, unique, representative, or an early example of a style, type, expression, martial or construction method;
• display a high degree of craftsmanship or artistic merit;
• demonstrate a high degree of technical or scientific achievement;
• have a direct association with a theme, event, belief, person, activity, organization, or institution that is significant to a community;
• yield or have the potential to yield information that contributes to an understanding of a community or culture;
• demonstrates significant architectural value; or
• is important to supporting the character of an idea, physically or historically linked to surroundings, or is a landmark.

There are over 4,500 homes in Toronto and many more in the GTA that are properly designated as a heritage home. Designated homes or areas are legally protected and require an approval from city council for any demolition or alterations. Properties can also be “listed”. This means that, while they don’t have heritage status, they are being researched and assessed to see if they qualify for it. Owners of listed properties have to give the city a 60-day notice before any demolitions or alterations, in which time the city can grant the property heritage status.

While a designation may seem like a nice status for your house to have, there are a few things to note. Any home that has status or that is part of an HCD, again, must have city council evaluate and approve any plans for repair or alteration to the building(s). For an HCD, new developments in the area also have to blend in with existing historical buildings. Though these rules create barriers for property owners, Richard Silver, senior vice president of sales at Sotheby’s Canada, sees heritage designations as a positive:

I think that an HCD actually protects the atmosphere of a neighbourhood and is a bonus when buying.

The barriers on heritage homes and HCDs aren’t extensive, but you can expect to wait a few months for approvals on renovations and changes. When applying, it can help to provide what the site looks like now and what it can potentially look like after your repairs and alterations.

Know that the integrity of your plans may be challenged [by city council] if you are not in keeping with the [heritage] community.” said Silver, “But at the end of the day that is what has attracted you to the area. Why change it?

You should also expect higher renovation costs. Heritage homes require many architectural features to be kept the same. And to keep these features the same, the house may need highly custom and precise labour and pricier materials. This can include trimming details and stonework, special woods for doors and windows, and much more.

362 Wellesley St East | Cabbagetown

Due to these additional barriers and costs, some homeowners who live in potential-heritage-home properties choose not to apply for heritage home status. And if their property is selected without an application, they appeal to the city council.

If you’re looking to buy a heritage home, make sure to estimate how much renovations will cost. Ideally, tour the house with a contractor before purchase to understand the potential price tag of buying and renovating the property.

A heritage home can be a handful, but some of the benefits can be worth the costs. By owning a heritage property, you’ll have access to the Heritage Grant Program, which assists property owners with repairing and maintaining the defining features of a heritage building. To qualify for the grant, a property must be designated under PART lV or V of the Ontario Heritage Act and be a residential or property-tax-exempt property. This grant can provide up to $10,000 or 50% of the eligible heritage conservation costs. However, you can only receive this grant once every five years, and if you own multiple heritage properties, you can only apply for one property per year. If the program interests you, make sure to apply fast! Applications for 2019 are due October 21, 2018.

Another benefit of owning a heritage home is pride. The historical value of the home is important and a great talking point when speaking to associates and friends. Some see the heritage aspect as a con due to additional obstacles when altering the property, but when selling the home, it should definitely be listed as a pro. Many home buyers want a story and that’s exactly what you get from heritage homes—and something you won’t get from a newly developed property.

By market evaluations, the pros and cons even out. Silver says that heritage status has not affected most homes in Toronto:

These days a lot of the areas in Toronto are in HCD: Rosedale, Cabbagetown, the Annex etc. These areas have seen a huge price increase in value so the fact of being an HCD has not affected them. It just means that they are more difficult to tear down or to make changes to when the changes are not consistent with the neighbourhood.

AZ00KV

A few months ago we met with Alan Carson of Carson Dunlop Home Inspection Services and he told us about an app called Setter. We have tried it and it is a Virtual Property Manager and concierge service for your home. It is like having a concierge to look after you in a hotel or condo except it is on your phone.

Each request is sent to Setter and they search for you, get an estimate and you can choose a time for the job to be completed. They have been very attentive and helpful throughout and we cannot recommend them highly enough. Here is a walkthrough and introduction to this game-changing service.

About Setter

Setter is a venture-backed marketplace for home services such as plumbing, appliance repair, pest control, and much more. The app, available on both iOS and Android, founded by former custom-home builder David Steckel, aims to be a single point of contact for home repairs and upgrades for homeowners. And Steckel strongly believes that every homeowner should have a single point of contact for their housing needs:

The home is a person’s most significant investment in their portfolio. If you think of your health, you have a doctor. If you think of your wealth, you have many different institutions. If you think of your home, your single largest asset, it’s the homeowner managing it. And the homeowner is not always educated to do so. Setter is here to help with that.

Through Setter, you can order home services from reliable, Setter-vetted vendors. The app has a home management team comprised of individuals with different industry experiences. Collectively, they vet potential vendors. The company also uses Scope of Work and before-after pictures to verify the vendor’s capabilities.

Setter has a dedicated point of contact that you can message for all your needs—a home manager. You can make requests in simple English (i.e., “Can you dispose of a dead raccoon in my yard?”), and your home manager will find the necessary vendor and bring back a quote.

Steckel knows that consumers need an app like Setter due to his experience as a custom-home builder:

We were building homes and handing the keys to the owners, but they weren’t changing the filters to their AC unit or they needed a shelf put up. In these situations, they would call us back, and we would take care of it. I realized really quickly that there’s a real need for a trusted source for these little things, these little upgrades, these little repairs.

Noticing the demand, Steckel started a business to solve this consumer issue. As the business grew, he realized that he and his team could better facilitate their service through technology; and thus, the Setter app was born.

The app currently operates in the GTA and San Francisco, with plans to expand through the entire US and Canada, neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Steckel envisions that Setter will make neighbourhoods with 250-500 houses behave similarly to a condo with 250-500 units. He wants Setter to function like a property manager for these neighbourhoods. This means scheduling all the maintenance for these 250-500 neighbourhood homes at once, just like a condo would. Steckel’s mission is to bring down the cost of living for these homeowners while providing increased home maintenance.

We want home maintenance to be invisible. Just like how getting a taxi or having something delivered is invisible—you just order an Uber or go on Amazon. We believe home maintenance will be this simple.

Inside the App

When you download Setter and enter the app, the first thing you notice is how nice the design is. The app greets you with beautiful images and a simple registration process, asking for your phone number and home address to get started. You then enter the main home page. On the top portion of the screen is a faded picture of your house (found thanks to the address, which can be slightly creepy) with a greeting and your address. A few functions are laid out immediately below this banner.

You’ll have the option to request services. The app asks for a picture of what is in need of maintenance with an accompanying voice note or text message. An image isn’t mandatory, however, and providing a voice note or text is more than enough. If you do want to send an image, you have the option choose a photo from your library or to take a photo through the app. This whole process is very straightforward and navigable for even the less tech savvy.

After adding a picture (or skipping this step), you’re asked “What do you need?”, “Where is it in your home?”, and “When do you need it by?”. Again, you can respond either via text or voice note. By clicking on the Setter logo or the emergency option, you can also call your home manager directly, though you may not get a response outside of regular business hours. So unlike many apps, which run on chatbots, you’re talking to a real human being with Setter.

Once you make a request, you can check the status. There are four stages: Request, Quote, In Progress, and Complete. Below the status bar, you can continue to communicate with your point of contact. It can be confusing at first to cancel a request, but simply asking to cancel the request in the chat is the way to go.

The left-hand side has a menu where you can find a number of other options:

• How it Works: A static page that explains what Setter does and how it works.
• Maintenance services: All of the services that Setter provides—categorized by seasons in a checklist format. This checklist is highly useful for homeowners who don’t know what they should prioritize. Even individuals not using the Setter app can leverage this checklist to see what maintenance their house needs by the season.
• Pricing: A static page that explains how the pricing structure works and the 10-25% markup. This page also explains that the markup is to pay for your point of contact or “home manager” and that the 10-25% range depends on the service. Setter’s transparency in its pricing is fantastic.
• Call Setter: Brings you to your dial pad with a phone number to reach your home manager directly.
• Profile: A page to change your address, email, phone number, and/or add/edit your credit card information.

This menu is very easy to use. Most pages are static making it dead simple and again, great for those lacking technological competency.

During business hours, you can expect responsive replies from your home manager, and outside of business hours, a response will come as soon as it can. Because you’re dealing with a real person, you can expect customized answers and not ones that follow a generic algorithm. Overall this app is great in assisting you with accessing service providers for your home and is a great one-stop shop.

SIGN UP USING TORONTOISM’s LINK AND GET $200 CREDIT!

There is no charge to sign up, and as a matter of fact, they are offering a $200 credit to any of our readers who sign up. ($100 off the first two jobs). If you are overwhelmed with work, family and the home that you love, go to http://setter.com/torontoism and sign up.

AZ00KV