www.realtor.ca is not the MLS® system!

       

By Angela Boudreau, CAE CRAE Executive Officer, Saint John Real Estate Board You know what's ironic? The incredibly popular real estate website, www.realtor.ca, which is chock-full of REALTOR® listings, isn't actually the means by which REALTORS® search for properties. Not at all. Surprised? The site, which averages 3.5 million unique hits every single month from coast to coast in Canada, solely attracts the public. Day in and day out, thousands upon thousands of clicks and searches are made by home buyers, home sellers, and those who simply enjoy cruising the latest homes for sale. Real estate salespeople who are members of their local real estate board - in Greater Saint John, that's about 230 of them, or over 95 per cent of those licensed in our region - access the services of their Board’s Multiple Listing Service®, also known as MLS®. The MLS® system is wide, deep, and robust. It contains all residential and commercial properties that are actively for sale, or ever have been over the last 20-or so years. In addition to the basic information posted on www.realtor.ca, the MLS® system includes property taxes, sale prices, days on market, specific instructions about showing appointments, and details about heating, land titles, rental equipment, inclusions such as appliances, and dozens more. All of this data is collected by, submitted by, and accessible only to members of the Saint John Real Estate Board. The www.realtor.ca website gets its data from MLS®. Through a legal agreement in place with the Canadian Real Estate Association, a handful of key data fields upload nightly from the MLS® system to www.realtor.ca so the public can have a glance, in an organized and compiled way, at every single listing for sale with the country's more than 100,000 REALTORS®. But most of the true real estate exposure, marketing, and trading occurs as a result of the private MLS® system, where over 230 Greater Saint John REALTORS® share their inventory with fellow REALTORS® and use their professional expertise to endlessly comb through the inventory, analyzing, sorting, and using a variety of system tools to zero in on the properties that meet the needs of each of their buyers. If you choose to sell your home yourself, you probably know it won’t appear on www.realtor.ca, and it certainly won’t be in the MLS® system. But you should also be aware that even if you choose to post your property on a site that promises to get your home "exposed" on www.realtor.ca, it still may not be in the local MLS® system where local REALTORS® can find it and sell it. Only members of the Saint John Real Estate Board can enter listings into MLS®. If you entrust the listing of your house with anyone, make sure they are licensed to trade in real estate in the province of New Brunswick, and find out whether or not your home will be in the Saint John Real Estate Board MLS® system, where over 95 per cent of REALTORS® will find it and market it on your behalf.

Water that smells like rotten eggs

Culligan Blog

What to Do When Your Water Smells Like Rotten Eggs

Ever had the experience of turning on the faucet and what comes out is an affront to your senses? Especially your olfactory one? That's usually the biggest tell that you might have some sulfur sneaking its way into your water supply.
It can be a pretty upsetting experience, which is why we wanted to give you all the information we could to help make it a little more bearable, as well as a clear-cut plan for how to get rid of it, and help make sure it doesn't come up again.

Effects of Sulfur Bacteria in Water

The unmistakable odor of rotten eggs really has nothing at all to do with eggs, in this case - rather, the culprit is usually one or more variants of the chemical sulfur. The chemical typically creeps into your water at the source when the supply originates from groundwater resources; it's also common among well-water users. Although sulfur content in water may not lead to serious health effects, its presence is extremely unpleasant to the senses.
Not only will sulfur bacteria lead to offensive odor and taste, it can lead to corrosion of your metal appliances and discoloration of your silverware and copper or brass utensils. You may also notice the negative effects on your laundry - greasy-feeling water and discolored clothing.

What You Can Do About It

Now that you know what's causing the smelly, bad-tasting water, what is there to be done? These foul characteristics can remain even after the water treatment process and remain in the water once it reaches your home. By adding an in-home water filtration system like the Culligan HE Sulfur-Cleer® Whole-House Filter, you'll have better-smelling and better-tasting water throughout your home immediately.
This Culligan filtration system is expertly designed to reduce odor by oxidizing the presence of hydrogen sulfide in your water, while the Sulfur-Cleer® cuts straight to the root of your problem, leaving you with fresher water and fewer odors.

From the fine folks at Culligan Rothesay.

It’s been a while!

Sorry that it has been awhile since our last post but we have changed a few things around at Oakhill as we grow our business. We realized that the model home centre we had located on Ashburn Road wasn’t the right fit and we had an opportunity to change things up so we did. We have moved our office to a building we own, located at 25 Williams Court in Quispamsis, we placed two mini homes on land we own and order another spec home for Bermuda Court in East Saint John. We haven’t stopped there either as we are into the final negotiations on two parcels of land that we are very excited about, one that will be a land home package for mini homes in Saint John and the other a typical subdivision in Quispamsis.

 

 

We had a very busy month in July and August with the move and business went through the roof as we closed on a number of transactions. So as we look around and try to find some time to get things into their place we realize we feel a lot like our clients. Moving can be stressful, you lose things, the effort to get everything back up and running like you had it is always a struggle. We were operational here by the end of July but just today we had the cabling guys in to see how hard it will be to move one of our phones. We still have boxes to unpack, shelving to go up but like our clients we are getting through it all.

Rest assured you will see us back at the blog keeping you informed of the latest stats and market trends and sharing with you all the info we can.

Blog soon!