Ever thought about immigrating to Canada?  Well, Toronto is the place to be.  With a diverse population and job base, Toronto is Canada’s largest city and the equivalent to New York City of the United States.  In addition, the nation’s capital city, Ottawa, is also located in the same province, providing administrative benefits for being close to the capital.  If you want to experience France, there is Quebec only a few hours drive away, a truly different experience compared to the rest of Canada.  Drive south for an hour and you can get to Buffalo, New York and the beautiful Niagara Falls.  Detroit and the Great Lakes are also nearby.  So why wait, I strongly recommend checking out some Toronto Condos, since they prove to be solid investments and the favorite of investors especially those from Hong Kong and the rest of Asia.  Overall, the diversity of Toronto has drawn many foreign investors to the city and real estate there proves to be solid investments.

Recently, the mortgage crisis, the recessing economy, and many other factors such as lack of consumer confidence has led to people being reluctant to buying houses. Buying a house seems so distant in the minds of many Americans right now, they hardly ever think of it. The majority of them merely want to get by the days with what they have. They fear investment, even if it’s for the greater good. The reasoning is that if they venture into risky, unknown, and volatile lands, they might lose what they have. I suppose that’s a reasonable fear. But they do not have to go alone. If they want to invest into a property, they can do it with another trustable friend by jointly investing into a town house. A town house is like a house of your own, except you share the building with another family. It is one house split into two with indivdual doors. The reason that it’s cheap is because you are, obviously, sharing one house and one property with another person. But, it is a great investment.

Are you low-income? Do you want to own your own house but don’t think you can afford it? Well, good news? Good news indeed! There’s a federal government program called Habitats For Humanity whereby you may be able to build a house for yourself with the help of the US government. If you are low-income and meet certain criteria, you may qualify to be a candidate for the Habitaty For Humanity program. All you need to do is volunteer for a certain amount of hours for the program (to help others build their houses) and then put the same amount of time into building your own house with the help of others. Habitat for Humanity offers loans at zero interest rate, for it is a non-profit organization dedicated to the housing of humanity. Everybody deserves a decent home to live in, and no body should be left out. Habitat believes this, and it is working toward an ultimate mission of housing all of humanity. How would you build a house if you have no idea how to, you might ask? Well, there are trained supervisers on the spot to instruct and help you. Good luck!

Are you a first time homebuyer? Do you want to own your own house but are worried that you do not have enough money? Well, good news! The United States government is issuing something called a tax-rebate, whereby first-time homebuyers get an approximate $8,000 tax break when they buy their home. However, there are requisites that one must meet prior to qualifying for the rebate. First, one has to pay at least $8,000 in tax each year. This sounds like it’s just a break-even, right? Y0u pay $8,000, you get $8,000. Well, no. Usually, one would not get this tax-break, and either way, one would still have to pay the tax. Due to the recessing economy, the US government has decided to issue this rebate to encourage first-time homebuyers. How does this help the government, you might ask? Well, the economy is strongly built on the estate foundation. If there are more homebuyers, banks make more money, and when banks make more money, businesses get more loans, and when businesses get more loans, things are just cheaper and consumer confidence thrives. So, if you have yet to own your first home, be sure to hop on the rebate bandwagon before it’s too late. The rebate expires in December 2009!

Hope things are going well, everybody.  This is part one of our ongoing series: First Time Urban Property Investor.

For first-time owners, consider this. Instead of looking for a single-family home to live in, how about trying to look for a duplex, a triplex or even a four-plex? Typically they are around the same price as a home the same size in the area, but the pros of these properties is that you can rent it out to people, while potentially getting some sort of tax deduction for doing so. I would check with a professional with that, but typically you can depreciate a portion of the improvement value over 27.5 years, plus you can expense a portion of the maintenance costs if you lease out part of the building, thus giving you some tax break, while also benefiting from having somebody pay for your mortgage payments, going towards your first home.

So why not??? Though you have to deal with potentially troublesome tenants and maintain the property (the latter you should be doing for your own home anyway), you can always get hired help and still end up with money in your pocket to pay off some of your mortgage, resulting in a more affordable house. Live through it a few years and you could always decide you don’t want to be a landlord so you can move up to your dream single-family home. For more information, I recommend talking to your local real estate agent to take a look at the prices of multi-family properties and the most important, the cap rate, the ratio between rental income after expenses versus the property price. This ratio will help you determine whether the property will generate enough cash flow for you to not even worry about mortgage payments in general.