Sometimes, when you buy a second home, you can’t sell the first. Here’s how to cope. Until recently, Paul and Kelly were quite happy at their home in Sanford, Manitoba. They took care of their three foster children and ran their natural beauty business. Then the house next to Paul’s old family cottage in Kenora, Ont., went up for sale. It was everything they needed: a cottage-style house fit to raise the children and 160 acres to continue...

When your weekend refuge starts looking blah, try some quick techniques for punching things up.   Opening the cottage every spring always reveals a to-do list of projects. Docks that need a hammer and nail. Screens riddled with holes. Outhouses verging on catastrophic. And interior spaces that look drab, cluttered and dated. Many long-time family cottages could use a renovation or serious interior-design overhaul, but that’s not always in...

Here’s what $470,661, the average home price today, can get you across the country. There’s no question that Canadian housing prices are hot – the average price of a detached home has climbed 33.5 percent since September 2011. Yet not all markets are created equal. In some locales, you can get a lot more house for your buck. Curious to see how big, or how small, a place you can get in different cities? We took the national average price of...

Selling an expensive house to buy a cheaper condo in the city used to be a no-brainer, but with housing prices soaring in many areas, it’s getting harder to make the math work. For the last 20 years, Mary and Randy Marlo raised their family in a beautiful ranch-style bungalow that was perched on a hill in the East Toronto neighbourhood of West Rouge. In the summer months, they’d spend family time playing in the large backyard or watching...

You used to dream of getting away in the winter to a place where the sun kisses your skin and you could wear flip-flops daily. Now that dream’s a reality – you spend your winters playing canasta and perfecting your golf swing down south. While it’s exciting to escape the winter weather, you now have homes to maintain in different countries. Transitioning from one place to another can be a lot of work, but with a little preparation you can...