There’s no doubt about it. Preventing mice from entering your home is much easier than evicting them once they’ve moved in. If you take just a few simple precautions, you can avoid the trip to the store to buy traps or the call to the exterminator.

Here’s what the experts recommend:

-  Install mouse-mesh in the drainage slots of exterior brick or siding. There are many types available on the market. (Note: make sure you don’t block water drainage!)

- Trim back tree branches that are within two feet of the siding or roof. Mice can jump horizontally as far as 15 inches.

- Make sure weather-stripping on doors and windows seal tightly. Mice can easily squeeze through weak spots and gaps, especially where stripping meets at a corner.

- Don’t leave open packages of any type of food — birdseed, apples, etc. — in the garage. That’s like telling the mice, “The buffet’s open!”

- Inspect the outside of your home and look for evidence of mice near walls, doors and windows. Look for mice droppings, which look like black rice.

- If you see a mouse outside your home, don’t shoo it away. Instead, watch where it goes. The mouse might show you how it’s getting in.

Taking these precautions will significantly reduce the chances of micebecoming unwanted guests in your home.

Is there a neighbourhood you drive through occasionally and think, “Wow. I’d love to live here. What a fantastic area”?

Why don’t you take that thought any further? Maybe you think getting into that neighbourhood just isn’t doable – at least, not right now.

Perhaps you’re worried about the home prices or the current lack of homes forsale in that area. Maybe there’s some other reason, such as the possibility of higher mortgage payments.

Of course, those are all valid concerns. But why not find out whether or not they would genuinely hold you back?

For example, if you’re wondering whether you can afford a home in that neighbourhood, you can find that out with a reasonable degree of certainty. You can:

-  Get a current market value assessment so you know, approximately, what you’d likely get for your home.

-  Find out the average selling price of homes in the target neighbourhood.

-  Calculate what you’d be able to put down on a new home.

-  Find out how much mortgage you’ll need and what your payments would be.

Once you’ve taken a closer look at the actual numbers, you might discover that a nice home in your desired neighbourhood is within reach.

So, get the facts you need instead of assuming you can’t get into the neighbourhood you want.

The fact might be, you can!

Call today if you’d like to explore that possibility. I can help you get the facts you need.

April 1, 2021

A total of 1,173 properties sold in the Victoria Real Estate Board region this March, 92.9 per cent more than the 608 properties sold in March 2020 and 35.9 per cent more than the previous month of February. Sales of condominiums were up 111.8 per cent from March 2020 with 377 units sold. Sales of single family homes were up 88.2 per cent from March 2020 with 574 sold.

"Limited supply with overwhelming demand has been the story for the first quarter of 2021," said Victoria Real Estate Board President David Langlois. "This time last year was the beginning of the pandemic and most everything was shut down – so we cannot compare year over year numbers – but if we look at longer term trends, the average number of sales from the month of March in the past ten years before 2020 was 715 properties. Numbers from last month are close to the market trends we saw in 2016, but with an even greater imbalance in inventory due to a surge in consumer demand for homes in the Victoria area."

There were 1,310 active listings for sale on the Victoria Real Estate Board Multiple Listing Service® at the end of March 2021, 41.8 per cent fewer properties than the total available at the end of March 2020 and 0.6 per cent properties fewer than the 1,318 active listings for sale at the end of February 2021.

"The underlying issue is a deficit in supply," explained Langlois. "Supply needs to be addressed by all levels of government and particularly by local governments which control land use policies and development processes. Equally important, governments need to ensure that measures they make to moderate the housing market do not exacerbate the problem by attempting to suppress demand by adding costs or qualification barriers. These sorts of measures raise the overall cost of housing and add even more challenges for first time buyers. We need to continue to push for both increased supply and sensible government policies around housing."

The Multiple Listing Service® Home Price Index benchmark value for a single family home in the Victoria Core in March 2020 was $879,600. The benchmark value for the same home in March 2021 increased by 10.1 per cent to $968,700 a 2.2 per cent increase from the previous month of February. The MLS® HPI benchmark value for a condominium in the Victoria Core in March 2020 was $531,800, while the benchmark value for the same condominium in March 2021 remained close to last year's value at $529,100 a 0.5 per cent decrease.