Looking to buy a new home and ...

[go iggy]

I was wondering is Excel a good builder? I heard from friends they were not.

[go iggy]

There are houses that we are looking at and neither of them have a fence. How do you decide exactly where the fence goes so its not on your neighbors property? Do you need to get a survey done?

Thanks

[ken0042]

My house was built by Excel. Defenetely low end; so make sure you are getting what you are paying for.

[Thor]

Why not by a home currently on the market, theres tons of great deals right now. I just think buying new might not be the best idea.

[SteveToms]

Beattie is all right, well crappy.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Thor

Why not by a home currently on the market, theres tons of great deals right now. I just think buying new might not be the best idea.

I agree 100%. I have a friend who bought a 2 bdrm condo today for well under 200k.

Originally Posted by go iggy

There are houses that we are looking at and neither of them have a fence. How do you decide exactly where the fence goes so its not on your neighbors property? Do you need to get a survey done?

Thanks

You can get a survey done, but if you and your neighbour have your real property reports you can do the measurements off both houses. The thing about a property line is it isn't a single line, but a strip that is many inches wide. As long as the fence is fully contained within that line, you are fine.

So make sure you are right, if you are not then the best case scenario is you need to register something with the city to allow for the encroachment.

Worst case, I have heard stories of people complaining about where a fence is, thinking it was to close to them, and they could make the neighbours pay to move it, only to find out it was actually to far on their neighbours property, so the neighbours made them pay to move it to the right spot. In another situation, the 7-11 by my moms place got in a dispute with the neighbour who complained about something , I think it was the location of their sign, a week later they brought out a survey company to settle the dispute and the company saw the fence the homeowner built was over a foot onto 7-11 property, so they moved the fence. I have no idea if they make him pay for it or not though.

[Incinerator]

Originally Posted by go iggy

There are houses that we are looking at and neither of them have a fence. How do you decide exactly where the fence goes so its not on your neighbors property? Do you need to get a survey done?

Thanks

A Real Property Report will tell you where the property lines are, it is usually the seller's responsibility to get one done before the deal closes. They are about $400.

[John Doe]

Originally Posted by go iggy

There are houses that we are looking at and neither of them have a fence. How do you decide exactly where the fence goes so its not on your neighbors property? Do you need to get a survey done?

Thanks

Rathji and Incinerator are right in that your Real Property Report (RPR) show where your property is. However, they only show it on a piece of paper and not actually on your property. As Rathji said, usually your fence is considered on property if it (centerline of the fence) is within 0.2 metres of the property line, so it doesn't have to be exact.

Your best option would be to do as Rathji said, get together with your neighbour and with both of your RPR's you should be able to get it pretty close. This is the best option as both you and your neighbour come to an agreement as to where the fence is, and if there are later any disagreements, that is who it will be between.

You can get it surveyed to be sure, but it is going to cost you well over $100 per hour, and depending on your neighbourhood, it could take a long time (mostly in old neighbourhoods where the survey evidence has been destroyed). If you know some who surveys you might be able to get it done cheaper as a side deal. Knowing surveyors, the best currency is beer.

Are you building it yourself? If not, I would think that the contractor would be able to look after finding the property line location.

[Jedi Ninja]

Regarding the property line, if this is a brand new lot / neighbourhood, you may be able to find the "drill holes" used by the surveyor on the concrete swale at the back of the lot and on the curb stop at the front. If they are still there, these would give a pretty exact location of the property line, in combination with you and your neighbour's RPR's.

[Jedi Ninja]

Originally Posted by go iggy

I was wondering is Excel a good builder? I heard from friends they were not.

Excel scores below average (and near the bottom) on JD Power's customer satisfaction survey:
http://www.jdpower.com/corporate/new...spx?ID=2008190

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by go iggy

There are houses that we are looking at and neither of them have a fence. How do you decide exactly where the fence goes so its not on your neighbors property? Do you need to get a survey done?

Thanks

You put the fence fully on someone's property. That way when you or your neighbours are long gone, there is zero ambiguity as to who gets to do what with the fence.

There are often orange spray paint marks, or foot long metal rebar placed where the property lines are.

[Jedi Ninja]

Originally Posted by Shazam

You put the fence fully on someone's property. That way when you or your neighbours are long gone, there is zero ambiguity as to who gets to do what with the fence.

There are often orange spray paint marks, or foot long metal rebar placed where the property lines are.

Not that I am disagreeing with you, but I was just googling the topic, and this guy seems to think the above is a bad idea, though I don't follow his logic:

http://reddeeraltalaw.com/articles/GoodFences.htm

[Locke]

Put the fence wherever you want and say "Fata the Police."

Seriously, if they have a problem with it tell them to take it up with Rico Fata, the look on their faces alone ought to be well worth it.

Then when Rico gets that phone call in Switzerland right before the game:

"Rico, you got a phone call."
"We were told to ask you about fencing jurisdictions in Calgary."
"WDF....damned CP."

Well worth it.

[Jedi Ninja]

Originally Posted by Thor

Why not by a home currently on the market, theres tons of great deals right now. I just think buying new might not be the best idea.

I would shop both new and used. You might be able to find some deals from builders right now as they have to continue to sell to remain in business, and I have heard some claim that builders are undercutting the market right now. The main risk with buying new is price changes between now and completion, so I wouldn't get into something that is going to take 4 to 6 months to build without selling my current home first.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by Jedi Ninja

Not that I am disagreeing with yout, but I was just googling the topic, and this guy seems to think the above is a bad idea, though I don't follow his logic:

http://reddeeraltalaw.com/articles/GoodFences.htm

This guy has vastly overthought the issue.

You don't give "rights" to your neighbour for the fence. What sort of broken idiocy is this? One of you keep the "rights", so that when your ######bag neighbour decides to be jerk, you get to tell him to screw off.

[Jedi Ninja]

Originally Posted by Locke

Put the fence wherever you want and say "Fata the Police."

Seriously, if they have a problem with it tell them to take it up with Rico Fata, the look on their faces alone ought to be well worth it.

Then when Rico gets that phone call in Switzerland right before the game:

"Rico, you got a phone call."
"We were told to ask you about fencing jurisdictions in Calgary."
"WDF....damned CP."

Well worth it.

I concur. On every street there is someone who is considered to be the bad neighbour, and they pretty much get to do whatever they want because noone wants the hassle of having to deal with them. It is important for you to establish yourself as the bad neighbour right from the beginning. Then you'll have the power in the neighbourhood. When your neighbours ask you to help with the fence, tell them to "Fata their Fatadamn fence, build it yourself!" When they start building the fence, call the bylaw officers on them 3 or 4 times. In the end, not only will you save the money on the fence, but you'll never have to worry about your neighbours bothering you ever again or even trying to talk to you.

[ShotDownInFlames12]

Originally Posted by Thor

Why not by a home currently on the market, theres tons of great deals right now. I just think buying new might not be the best idea.

Waaaaay better deals right now on building new. Plus you can customize it exactly how you want.

I'm building right now with Cedarglen and if I would have bought the same house even in Jan of this year I would have paid almost 125k more.

[gildo]

We built with Excel in Airdrie a few years back and they built a pretty simple home so make sure you don't pay too much. They don't give you much choice for selections from our experience, but I do have to admit that there show homes did show a lot of standards at the time so when we went to go choose stuff like kitchen cabinets there standard selections were pretty good. I also remember there lighting selection being good also. We are currently building again with another builder in Calgary (Cedarglen) and we've noticed we have way more appointments then we had with Excel and we have a better idea of what our house will exactly look like then we did with Excel, but at the end of the day we are paying $50,000 more. I found with Excel the quality was a bit lower but so were there prices, we got a brand new 1800 square foot home in Airdrie 2 years ago for $401,000 not too bad.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Jedi Ninja

I concur. On every street there is someone who is considered to be the bad neighbour, and they pretty much get to do whatever they want because noone wants the hassle of having to deal with them. It is important for you to establish yourself as the bad neighbour right from the beginning. Then you'll have the power in the neighbourhood. When your neighbours ask you to help with the fence, tell them to "Fata their Fatadamn fence, build it yourself!" When they start building the fence, call the bylaw officers on them 3 or 4 times. In the end, not only will you save the money on the fence, but you'll never have to worry about your neighbours bothering you ever again or even trying to talk to you.

You got it. Moving into a new neighborhood is a lot like prison. Either kill someone or act crazy to impose residential dominance.

[go iggy]

Great feedback everyone, thanks. I am buying a house already on the market but they often say on the description that it was built from so and so and one house in bridlewood is built from excel and thats why I was asking how they we're. We really want to move into the lake Chapparal area because it has more modern homes and the lake access. Evergreen would be our next choice (well aware of the lack of lake ther). The tough thing is we just sold our house and now only have 6 weeks to find our new home. Lots of pressure. My mother in law keeps sending mls listings of houses out of our price range. she thinks we can go in a low ball the price. i dont know if we can low ball someone 50 grand . Thanks for everyones feedback. Go Flames Go!!!!!