3-Bedroom Cottage in Lachine's Leafy Village St-Louis

Just listed, an impeccable 3-bedroom attached cottage in green and leafy Village St-Louis, a development in western Lachine.

You can check out the full listing on my Century 21 website www.marylamey.com

Village St-Louis was built in the early 1990s by Prevel, one of Montreal's most respected residential developers. Prevel is the company behind the Lowney and Imperial loft projects, the Soeur Grises condos at the foot of McGill St. near the Old Port, as well as a massive development project now underway in Griffintown. They build good stuff.

This development was built on the footprint of Lachine's former municipal golf course, incorporating many of its mature trees, water hazards and pretty fairways into the parks and walking path.

3582 Anatole-Carignan features about 1500-square-feet of living space, excluding the finished basement. The main floor has a entry hall with closet, open concept living and dining, powder room with laundry (which my vendor love love LOVES) and a beautifully upgraded kitchen with walk-out to a trellised deck and nicely landscaped back yard. There's even a vegetable garden.

The kitchen is done in a warm contemporary style  with12x24-inch matte black tile on the floor, offsetting the black granite counter and pearly white marble tile back splash. The cabinets are a warm mid brown and offer tons of storage. It's an easy kitchen for cooking, entertaining and hanging out.

The dining and living room have a bay window and wood fireplace and upgraded oak hardwood flooring.

Upstairs, two of the three bedrooms face the street and feature over sized windows, one with a semicircular fanlight. The master bedroom is big, with a walk-in closet and adjoins the main bath. The bathroom is done in neutral off-white, with a pedestal whirlpool bath set in a big bay window. The houseplants love hanging out there!  There's a separate shower.

The basement has the same upgraded oak floors, tons of room for toys, a library, a man cave, a home office or even a fourth bedroom. There are a few steps up to a patio door out to the back yard.

The asking price is $439,000. The municipal evaluation is $306,700 and the school and property taxes amount to a very modest $3500 a year. 

The vendors have taken excellent care of their home and invested in upgrades like the oak flooring, and classic oak handrail, newel posts and balusters for the staircase, a thermopump with air conditioning and a new roof.

I'm having an open house Sunday, June 2, 2013. 2-4 p.m. Drop by and see for yourself!

Sutton Brokers Were Left $600,000 Short When Their Agency Went Bankrupt

CBC Montreal recently had an excellent report on a group of former Sutton Royal agents who were done out of a combined $600,000 in real estate commissions when their agency was forced into bankruptcy.

The story began with an alleged cheque kiting scheme implicating the agency's director and his executive assistant. Two banks, the TD and National, stepped in when Sutton Royal accounts came up about $2 million short.

When it was discovered that the agency was depositing commission cheques for sales by its agents to a Bank of Montreal account, TD and National  asked the court to seize the money. Last December, the Dollard des Ormeaux agency was forced into bankruptcy.

That's when things got ugly for Sutton Royal's agents. Money they had earned selling homes and supposedly held in trust by their agency, as per the Real Estate Brokerage Act, was gone - poof - sponged up as part of the bankruptcy proceedings. To make matters worse, Sutton Quebec appears to have quietly paid off the collaborating agents (the agents who represented buyers in deals involving Sutton Royal's sellers) while stiffing their own people. Ouch.

I cannot imagine the nightmare these brokers are living. First, the agency they work for collapsed in scandal. Next, their revenue was snatched away - in the case of one agent, $300,000 ! The brokers allege Sutton Quebec president Christophe Folla promised to help them but has not.

An aside. When I was The Gazette's real estate reporter, I had a story about a Sutton agent (they were called agents then, not brokers) at the La Salle brokerage, who appeared to pretty much try to screw an old lady out of her condo. Her daughter came to me with the story. (Quebec's real estate authority later convicted him of breach of ethics and his license was suspended.)

I tried very hard to talk to Christophe Folla at that time. He never once called me back. I hope these agents have better luck. 

Click on the link above to read the whole story and watch the TV report. The CBC promises that a second report is coming up.

Stay tuned, as they say.

The Gap Between Asked and Sold Prices, Not All Montreal Neighborhoods Are Created Equal.

 Roberto Rocha, a tech-savvy reporter at The Gazette crunched some real-estate sales numbers to see which neighborhoods in Montreal have the smallest gap between asking prices and sale  prices in this softer than usual market. It makes for interesting reading.

Learn About Tableau

These are are average listing and sale prices for all housing types combined. Nice to see my favorite, Verdun, up near the top of the list. I think it might have done even better had the numbers been parsed more closely to exclude Nuns' Island. The island and mainland are very distinct real estate beasts. 

I do wonder how it can be that Outremont, home to Quebec's francophone business, legal and health care elites and that great bald-headed Cirque du Soleil git Whatshisname, can possibly have an average asking price of $450,000. That will buy you a nicer than average house near the water in Verdun, but certainly not a three-bedroom starter mansion in Outremont. Hmm.

The Plateau, where I do a fair amount of business, remains a hot commodity, with properties selling for just a shade under 95 per cent of asking price.

Westmount trails the pack, with a nearly 10-per-cent gap between asking and sold prices.

Have a look. 

The Stigma of Murder Didn't Block the Sale of this $900,000 Toronto Home

Some people won't buy a house where there's been a gruesome crime. Some people are less bothered. Their agent probably wishes he wasn't quoted in Canada's biggest broadsheet saying "It's a great conversation piece." 

Real Estate Brokers vs Du Proprio. We Ain't Scared

Here's broker Patrice Groleau, owner of Old Montreal's McGill Immobilier, talking about why he isn't particularly bothered by the likes of For Sale By Owner (FSBO) sites like Du Proprio.

As he puts it "Some people like to cut their own lawn, paint their own house, do their own taxes and invest their own money," He has nothing against those who do, but he sees value in working with people who are the best trained and most professional at what they do.

 Well put, M Groleau.

Plateau Duplex, Ready for Its 2nd Act. $387,000

UPDATE  We sold this duplex in less than a week for four per cent over the asking price. (You do the math.) Our vendor is delighted.


 Amy Barratt and I are about to list a duplex on Hotel de Ville Ave. just south of St. Josph Blvd. The property consists of a two-bedroom apartment that occupies the ground floor and second floor of the building. The third storey is a one-bedroom apartment.

The entire building will be available to the buyer.

The asking price is $387,000, which corresponds to the building's municipal evaluation. At that price, you understand that this is a building that requires some renovation, including a new roof, wiring, plumbing and probably interior finishes.

The current owner has had it for 15 years and has happily inhabited the third floor while renting out the larger apartment to tenants.

This building occupies more than 90 per cent of its lot. There is no yard of any kind.

This would be a kick-ass project for someone wanting to create a three-storey townhouse with a roof terrasse. It could also be reconverted into three-smaller apartments. If you've got the skills and the time or the money and the vision, there's no limit to what you might be able to do.

Give me a call at (514) 978-6522 to find out more or to book a visit.

The property will be listed on the MLS just as soon as I can data enter all the information. Probably tomorrow or Thursday, March 7, latest.

Exterior view. The property is the left side of these twin buildings.

View from the third-floor balcony.

Street view.

View of the corner of Hotel de Ville and St. Joseph.

I'd Like to Show You a Good Time- Wait, Whaaaaa?

Realtor Diana Arvatescu is getting all kinds of publicity from a provocative advertising billboard on what appears to be a windswept Calgary highway. (It might be downtown Calgary for all I know. Many of the main drags in Calgary look like unpopulated stretches of Taschereau Blvd., Newman Blvd., St. John's Blvd.)



The billboard features a  photo of  Arvatescu with  a come-hither look in her eye and the invitation "Let me take you home. It's gorgeous inside."

More than a little provocative. I mean, there are plenty of real estate pros, male and female who use glamour puss photos and their own innate sex appeal to sell houses. We all use what we have. (In my case, that means a sense of humor, intelligence and a reporter's skill at listening, hearing and delivering what my clients communicate. I know, sexy, right?)

This ad goes several steps, further. I think it sends the wrong message about women in real estate.

It is certainly courting controvery in Calgary where the local real estate board has voiced some discomfort about her sexually charged come on. The issue is particularly sensitive in a town where a young realtor was murdered after being lured to a house by a stranger.

What is she selling, exactly? Is she the product or is she the conduit to the product?  We might never know because the agent herself ducked out of a scheduled interview to talk about her billboard.

If you had a house to sell, would you want to see your agent's best come-hither face on a big-assed billboard or would you rather she spent her money on targeted marketing - ads in local papers, flyers, a mailed postcard with a picture of your house?

For the record, this kind of billboard would not fly in Quebec, where the OACIQ (our professional organization) says that we have to use our full names, titles and agency name in our advertising.We can only include information that is demonstrably true. You see the little #1 in the left bottom corner of her billboard? That would not fly in Quebec because it begs the question "#1 what? Who says? Where's the proof?" 

Guess standards are a little looser in Gas and Oil Country.

Luxury Address, Lowlife Clientele?

Heritage du Vieux-Port

The Toronto Star has a fascinating story today about the seamier side of one of Old Montreal's most exclusive luxury property's,  Le Heritage du Vieux-Port.

I don't know how long the link will be good so here's the gist of the story:

Hockey players and wealthy socialites call the Heritage du Vieux Port home.

Longer than a football field and crowned by four five-storey rooftop villas, it offers what the glossy sales brochure describes as “your private chateau in the city.”

But police also describe it as a virtually impregnable “bunker” for a handful of bikers, Mafia associates and other alleged organized crime figures who over the years found comfort and isolation behind the walls of the massive structure that once served as a refrigerated warehouse near the port.

How's that for a morning read?

The report goes on to enumerate at least 20 people with criminal records or ties to Montreal's underworld who have owned or lived in the 200-unit property in the last decade.

A Sûreté du Québec investigator told reporter Julian Sher of having carried out four search warrants on homes in the building and knew of a dozen more having been carried out since 1998.

True confession time. I was The Gazette's real estate reporter in 1999 when Toni Magi and his brothers announced their plan to redevelop a massive refrigerated warehouse on the edge of Montreal's Old Port.

No one had ever heard of the Magi brothers - I think remember there being four of them - at that point. In later years, Toni Magi evinced an amazing affinity for surviving being shot at. It got his name in the papers quite a lot.

I do remember the launch was held on a beautiful fall day, aboard a gleaming boat that cruised the harbour. Mayor Pierre Bourque, smiling and vacant, was in attendance.  There were hors d'oeuvres and light classical music. It was the splashiest PR event announcing the launch of new condo. (They usually involved visiting an unheated Dickie Moore trailer to pick up a sales kit and meet a sales agent who was chilled to the bone.)

The Magis couldn't bring the project to completion and ended losing it to TRAMS Property  Management, a large real-estate development and managemnt firm that does a lot of work in the U.S.. 

Radio-Canada's investigative news show, Enquete, will have a report on the dubious doings at one of Montreal's most luxurious addresses tonight. I, for one, intend to tune in.

In the meantime, if anyone is in the market for a luxury apartment in a bunker-like chateau on the edge of Old Montreal, give me a call. Prices start at about $2,500 for a rental and climb to $4.45 million for a penthouse.

After tonight, those prices might be negotiable.

What Were They Thinking?

Master bedroom of a $500,000 duplex currently for sale in Montreal. Wanna smoke crack?

New Listing in LaSalle 8997-8999 Godbout

Amy Barratt and I have just listed an impeccable 1965 duplex at 8997-8999 Godbout in LaSalle. The property has been inhabited by the same owners since the year of construction and has been carefully maintained.

It consists of two three-bedroom dwellings. The ground floor has a finished basement with powder room, laundry room and workshop, as well as a two-car, tandem garage. The ground floor is available for immediate occupancy.

The upper is rented for $800 a month, heated. It has washer and dryer in the bathroom.

Both units are heated by a single oil-burning furnace, with hot-water (radiator) heating systems that are independent of one another. The ground floor also has a wall-mounted A/C.

What I love about this property is that the original style has been lovingly preserved. The kitchen is straight out of an episode of the Brady Bunch, I'm pretty sure. Love the real wood-grain cabinets. Love the copper drawer pulls. Love the etched glass panels with geese in full flight.

.(Love the wallpaper a little less, but that is a cosmetic trifle.)

This property has gleaming, unsullied oak floors throughout the main level. The basement has wall-to-wall carpets which are being steam cleaned as I write.

The roof was installed in 2004 and is still under guarantee. The front and rear balcony railings, stairs and flashings were redone in aluminum within the last decade. Ditto the fibreglass balcony decks.

The thermopane windows date from 1992. The hot water tanks were replaced in 2007 and 2008, respectively. The oil tank was replaced in 1999.

The living room is large and quite bright, thanks to the southwestern exposure that provides lots of afternoon sunlight through a big picture window. Fabulous for entertaining.

The bedrooms are well proportioned with good closet space and big windows.

The bathroom is fully functional if a little retro with its pink wall tile, pink and white shower tiles and pink marble-effect arborite vanity. It has a large closet and could easily be remodeled for the washer and dryer. Again, a trifle to change.

The lot is also larger than average for the neighborhood, measuring 388 square metres or 4180 square feet. 

Asking price is $453,000, which is a very competitive price for the area. 

Give me a call to schedule a visit. Mary Lamey (514) 978-6522 or Amy Barratt (514) 718-6522