Kate and Arthur Ruff spent some 60 hours combing census data, scouring school scores and searching the Internet from Massachusetts, keen to make sure their move to Toronto landed their family in the right neighbourhood.

In the end, their happy relocation to the Christie and Dupont area was prompted largely by an innovative new web tool called Neighbourhood Match, a sort of eHarmony for house hunters.

That and the coffee question; Do you prefer Tim’s, Starbucks or independent coffee houses?

“I loved that. Once you see that question you realize, that’s it!,” says Kate Ruff, who’s in the process of moving her two children into their new three-bedroom semi in time to start kindergarten.

“That sums up the intangible feel of so many neighbourhoods. I’m an indie kind of girl.”

Neighbourhood Match took the Ruffs far beyond the elaborate spread sheets they’d plotted out by researching listings on Realtor.ca and asking questions of Toronto friends via Facebook.

“We didn’t have the luxury of driving down streets. We didn’t want to get involved in bidding wars,” says Kate.

“We wanted to be in an area with great schools and a lot of diversity — different people, ages, education, language. That was really important to us.”

Neighbourhood Match is the brainchild of Toronto real estate agent John Pasalis and his partner Urmi Desai and just launched last May on their Realosophy Realty Inc. website.

“We take what we call the Steve Jobs approach — we adapt technology to solve consumer problems in real estate,” says Desai.

The only problem is those problems are personal: finding a home that makes your heart race — be it a bungalow, townhouse or condo — within a set budget that suits your lifestyle.

Pasalis and Desai have spent years mining data, crunching numbers and getting a feel for some 167 Toronto neighbourhoods, from Scarborough west to Etobicoke and the far reaches of North York.

They looked beyond MLS listing data and school scores.

“I said, ‘We need coffee shops. I want (proximity to) dog parks because these are things people care about,” says Desai.

The couple even tried to access crime stats and a list of homes busted as grow ops. They’ve been unable, so far, to find reliable data on either front.

Recently Neighbourhood Match started featuring novel Top 10 lists: Best Toronto schools on a $500 K budget; Most Walkable Toronto neighbourhoods over $1 million.

There’s only one big problem.

You won’t find a home on the site that’s currently for sale. All the data relates to homes that have sold in the last year.

That’s because of Toronto Real Estate Board rules that, until this week, have prohibited agents from creating online sites, now common in the United States, featuring details on all current property listings — information agents have at their fingertips and routinely send to their clients via phone, in person or email.

Thursday the real estate board, which has been in an escalating war of words with Ottawa’s Competition Commissioner, voted to make more of that MLS listing information available.

But it could be two more months until the technology is in place to download all the data, and then it will be up to agents to decide if, and how, they want to create password-protected Virtual Office Websites (VOWs) where buyers can access at least 10 more bits of information not now available on the public site Realtor.ca.

That will include, for instance, days on the market, but not historical sold data.

TREB says it’s unable to release sold data because of privacy laws, arguing agents who now routinely hand out that very same data to clients have a relationship with them and know how the sensitive financial information is being used.

TREB president Richard Silver fears that having sold data widely available online leaves it open to abuse, such as evidence in divorce cases, and leaves the board openly in violation of privacy laws.

It also poses a problem if a sold price is released before a deal closes and it then falls through, he said. New bidders would then have a huge leg up.

All that has left Pasalis frustrated.

“We decided to build (Neighbourhood Match) because we weren’t allowed to do what companies in the U.S. are doing, offer a different way to search listings,” says Pasalis.

“Just giving us access to all the current listings (electronically) is pretty big. It’s going to give us a tonne more options in terms of the data we can slice and dice. But getting access to sold data would help even more. It would allow us to drive more detailed analysis of, say, neighbourhood price trends.”

The competition bureau has been unrelenting in its demands that all listing and sold information be made public, accusing the board of trying to unfairly protect traditional bricks and mortar real estate agents from new online players.

Pasalis and Desai are a hybrid of both.

They have a chic storefront in Leslieville but have seen the future of real estate — clients who are used to booking trips and buying clothes online and, like the Ruffs, want real tools to do at least some of the digging on their own.

Pasalis isn’t worried at all that could put Realosophy out of business.

“A lot of our clients are coming to us because they want more than just information, they want advice, they want service beyond just sending them a bunch of listings.

“I think (making more listing information public) is going to raise the bar on what agents are going to have to do to survive in this business.”

http://canadaonline.about.com/od/canadaday/a/canadachecklist.htm

The CMB program quietly celebrated its ten-year anniversary this past week by selling another round of bonds to a world-wide market that would have happily bought more (the issue was 1.4 times oversubscribed, meaning there was $1,400 of investor money lined up to buy every $1,000 Canada Mortgage Bond unit available). In the same week that Greek 5-year government bonds soared past 20%, the CMB program issued $6 billion worth of its bonds at a yield of 2.549%. This program, which now has $285 billion in bonds outstanding, is the single biggest reason why Canadian borrowers enjoy some of the lowest mortgage rates on the planet. Here’s a brief description of how the program works:

Lenders must first be approved by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) in order to pool and sell their mortgage loans to the Canada Housing Trust (CHT). These pooled loans, called Mortgage-backed Securities, are then converted by CHT into Canada Mortgage Bonds (CMBs). That’s the magic step because now these bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government, and as such, investors will accept yields only marginally higher than those offered on Government of Canada bonds. (The CMB program provides other benefits as well, such as reduced capital requirements and increased liquidity, but that requires a more detailed explanation in a future post.)

Fixed-mortgage rates were unchanged for the week but in the background, Government of Canada (GOC) yields took us on quite a ride. They jumped 8 basis points (bps) on Tuesday, dove by more than 13 bps on Wednesday, and finished the week down about 7 bps overall. We’re still in choppy waters but, for the time being, the momentum arrow for fixed-rate mortgages is still pointing down.

For the third week in a row, the qualifying rate used for variable-rate mortgages (called the MQR) was lowered by 10 bps to 5.39%. The belief that variable rates will be on hold for longer than previously thought gained another adherent, with Craig Alexander, Chief Economist at TD, revising his previous estimates.

The bottom line: A healthy CMB program that enjoys broad-based support with plenty of international participation (about a third  of the latest issue was bought by foreign investors) will help keep our lenders liquid, and our mortgage rates competitive. Cheers to that.

David Larock is an independent mortgage planner and industry insider specializing in helping clients purchase, refinance or renew their mortgages. David’s posts appear weekly on this blog (movesmartly.com) and on his own blog (integratedmortgageplanners.com/blog). Email Dave

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Here are our best picks for the weekend ahead. We sure hope there are wading pools, freezies and some good family times in the works. After a stellar game of grown-ups-on-stilts against kids-on-feet soccer, we’re gathering lane way stories for our next issue and would love to hear about ways in which you, your family and your neighbours use your alley – send us a note or visit us on facebook ! And, if you are looking for even more inspiration check out the website for Festivals, Father’s Day events, Farmer’s Markets and more…
SATURDAY
Tea Party and Craft for Father’s Day
High Park Family Fun Place

They Might be Giants Family Concert
David Pecaut Square

Toronto Horse Day
The Horse Palace, Exhibition Place

Toronto Island Tree Festival
Franklin Children’s Garden, Centre Island

Yonge-Lawrence Village Day Street Festival
Lawrence Ave to Yonge Blvd

SUNDAY

Festival on Bloor
Bloor, Spadina to Bathurst

Music in the Orchard
Spadina Museum

Outdoor Guided Walk: Goat’s-beard, Dame’s Rocket and Anemones
Todmorden Mills Heritage Museum & Arts Centre

Art in the Park
Neilson Park Creative Centre

SATURDAY & SUNDAY

Movie: Hop
Fox Theatre

The Muppet Movie
Revue Cinema

The Three Little Pigs
Solar Stage Children’s Theatre

A summary of what is in the above mentioned link:

Toronto Real Estate Roundup May 13th 2011
Posted: 13 May 2011 05:50 AM PDT
John Pasalis in Real Estate Roundup

CREA raises forecast

Strong sales of multi-million dollar homes in Vancouver have led the Canadian Real Estate Association to hike their forecast for the year.  Average prices are expected to rise 4% to $352,500, a significant increase over the previous forcast of a 1.3% increase in prices.

Realtors raise forecast (Toronto Star)

CREA hikes forecast for home prices (Globe and Mail)

CREA’s 2011 forecast: A history (Steve Ladurantaye)

Other Real Estate News

Housing construction not too hot, not too cold – pdf (TD Economics)

A Redesigned Urban Toronto (Torontoist)

No new mortgage rule changes: Flaherty (National Post)

Home ownership isn’t for everyone (CTV)

Rosy outlook raises housing prices (Toronto Star)

Some homeowners at mortgage tipping point (Toronto Star)

The battle is on to save the Fort York bridge (Globe and Mail)

Got a mortgage question? Ask us (Globe and Mail)

John Pasalis is the Broker Owner of Realosophy Realty Inc in Toronto. Realosophy focuses on researching Toronto neighbourhoods to help their clients make smarter real estate decisions. Email John