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The Entire Ottawa New Homes Market -
All Together in One Place!

With HomesExplorer™ we bring together comprehensive, detailed information about the Entire Ottawa New Homes Market in one place and in one simple format for easy comparisons.

Finding a New Home used to be a difficult, time-consuming and costly exercise for Home Buyers because it took such a long time and such an enormous effort to find and analyze all the information needed to find the Best Home, at the Best Price, in the Best Community.

New Home Buyers had to contact as many as fifty Ottawa home builders, and then, somehow, make comparisons between the dissimilar and often contradictory information they eventually found.

Buyers of Used Homes had a much easier time of it, because only they had the MLS - a single location for Buyers to search and compare older Ottawa Real Estate.

Now HomesExplorer™ - our interactive search and presentation system - does the same thing for New Home Buyers!

Search for New Homes by LOCATION and FEATURES	Search for New Homes by LOWEST PRICE	Search for New Homes by BUILDER
4.5 % * Average from 28 Financial Institutions for Closed, variable rate mortgage

Design of the Month Reviews :

Terrace Homes, offered by about eight of the leading Ottawa-Gatineau home builders, have become one of the most popular form of housing in Ottawa, mainly because of their affordability and convenience. They take several different forms - from a quadraplex by Claridge named Zen in Bridlewood, to one or two-level walk-up (or down) apartments named Java and Jazz. And some are 2-storey lofts, like at Richcraft's Deercroft Terrace.

Although some builders try to make their elevations distinctive from the front, the rear elevation differences also invite scrutiny, with their siding, stairs and balconies. In short, all Terrace Homes are not alike. And Urbandale's Jazz homes differ from all of them.

Jazz Terrace Homes are stacked housing on three levels, to accommodate a one-car garage for each unit, which is situated in the rear of the building's lowest level (although one of those levels may properly belong to another apartment). Other Terrace Homes currently being marketed in Ottawa provide only outdoor parking bays.

Jazz homes are offered in three different designs...

The Appleby is offered at Fairwinds in Kanata/Stittsville, and also in Barrhaven Mews for slightly more. Its size is minimal at 1092 Square Feet.

Visitors will have noticed that for several months the three lowest-priced new townhomes on the market in Ottawa were all offered by Mattamy Homes. So we thought it was time to investigate how well the Appleby is designed and what compromises Mattamy has had to make to fit everything in, because 1100 Sq Ft is a tight fit for a house.

Due to the recent housing boom that has propelled new home prices and Ottawa Real Estate sky-high, we have seen a return to a scenario last played-out in the 1970's. Back then it was mortgage rates, rather than home prices, that were extraordinarily high - about 20% higher than today. CMHC therefore devised several successful schemes so that Ottawa Home Builders could provide housing that was affordable. They specified a minimum size of 1100 square feet as suitable for lower income home buyers, and home builders were invited to come up with the best designs which CMHC would subsidise. The new homes would sell at $34,000 and the high mortgage rates of the time would be on a sliding scale so that families could afford the lowest monthly payments in the first few years and hopefully pay more later on when they obtained salary increases. A challenge then ensued between Ottawa home builders to design the most successful new home that would enjoy the greatest demand...

This may be the first time that the words "luxury" and "semis" have been used together. That's because there are any of three objectives when designing semi-detached homes, and it's usually the first one that comes to mind - economy. In suburban communities Semis are often designed for young couples at a lower price than for a detached 2-storey home or other similar real estate.

But some are also built on infills closer to the downtown core where undeveloped land is rarely available, which makes them more expensive. And now there are architect-designed, luxury semis being built by Larco Homes.

With the price increases associated with the current housing boom, those buyers finding a larger detached 2-storey home out of reach have come to see Semis as an acceptable trade-off in order to obtain desirable features without astronomical costs, and still remain within an easy commute from downtown Ottawa...

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Latest New Homes Articles :

2007 was a banner year for the Ottawa-Gatineau housing market.

Despite fears of a housing bubble about to burst, or of increasing Ottawa mortgage rates, or of dramatically increased prices, buyers bought new homes in record numbers - in Ottawa, 35% more than in 2006.  And, such was their confidence in buyer's appetites, home builders' kept on building new homes on spec - in Ottawa, 14.5% more than 2006, and in Gatineau 7.5% more.

2007 was a year where Ottawa home builders' and Ottawa Mortgage Brokers dreams were realized - demand for homes kept up month after month, enabling builders to increase prices regularly, from 1 to 15 % at a time, depending on the model and location, (although, according to CMHC, average price increases amounted to just 3% for the year).  This was due to a stable rate of employment, and mortgage rates that remained moderate all year, before actualy decreasing in December.

It was, in other words, a long, glorious Sellers' Market for all Ottawa Real Estate.

Affordability was the key element in new home sales.  With the average price of a new single detached home in Ottawa priced way beyond what first-time home buyers and many others could afford, the majority of new home sales were in the multiple-unit category - town homes, condo apartments or semis.

In our 2007 Mid-Year Update, we proposed 3 ways of getting around this affordability barrier...

Just as ENERGY STAR is a program to promote energy efficient home building in Ontario, Novoclimat is the equivalent program that applies to new homes and real estate in Aylmer, Hull, Gatineau and the rest of Quebec.

As Natural Resources Canada explains :

Novoclimat is an initiative that allows Quebec home builders to increase the energy efficiency of their homes by building to the Novoclimat technical standards. An energy evaluation is done on the completed home and a Novoclimat certificate is provided to the homeowner. Novoclimat homes meet an EnerGuide rating of between 78 and 80.

Upfront Gatineau new home builders like CHABITAT, who take the program seriously by installing it in all their homes and including it in their prices, provide all visitors to their Aylmer sales centre with comprehensive information about Novoclimat...

Urgent steps have been announced in the U.S. and Britain to change the mortgage system. It results from foreclosures of 14,000 homes in England so far this year, where banks and other mortgage lenders were forced to repossess properties when their owners were unable to meet their financial commitments.

But the mortgage crisis is not only front page news in the UK. It is also a spectre hovering over the US economy, and on a much larger scale. Foreclosure rates and repossessions by lending institutions have hit a new high there too - the highest level since the slew of bankruptcies in the Savings and Loans (S&L) scandal of the 1980s that required huge bail-outs of some lenders. This time it's the sub-prime mortgage scandal.

A subprime mortgage is defined as a loan given to someone with a poor credit rating or debt history, at a higher-than-usual interest rate. The borrower is often seduced by astonishingly low starting mortgage rates, which over time rise considerably, and a streamlined, high-pressure buying process conveniently handled by a third-party - the Mortgage Broker. Subprime mortgages represent 20% of all U.S. mortgages...

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Our New Homes and Ottawa Real Estate listings include Terrace Home Apartment Condos, High-Rise Apartment Condos, 3,4, and 5 Bedroom Single Detached Homes, Semi-Detached Homes, Townhouses (Townhomes) and Bungalows. We cover 22 Top Ottawa Home Builders from Ontario, and all areas in Ottawa and Gatineau - Ottawa Downtown, Alta Vista, the Glebe, Ottawa South, Ottawa West and East, Barrhaven, Kanata, Westboro, Stittsville, Richmond, Gatineau, Aylmer and Hull. We also provide the latest Ottawa Mortgage Rates from over 30 Ottawa Mortgage Brokers.