Our Clients Empire Communities and Brookfield Residential are Finalists for 5 CHBA Awards!

13 Dec 2013 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in Awards Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m proud to announce that our clients Empire Communities and Brookfield Residential are finalists for 5 Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA) National SAM awards this year.

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First, Orchard Ridge Homes and Brookfield Residental’s Treetops community is nominated for Best Project Signage and Logo, Best Website and the prestigious Marketing Excellence Award.

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Empire Communities is nominated for the highly coveted Green Home Award for their Manhattan model at Imagine, a new home community in Niagara Falls which we opened for Empire this year, and which is also up for Best Project Signage and Logo.

The Manhattan home showcases Empire Communities’ latest green initiative: geothermal technology! Geothermal energy can save homeowners up to 80 per cent in total heating and cooling costs over traditional home energy costs, and is offered as an option on all new homes at Empire’s Imagine community as part of a progressive new green initiative on their part.

Both clients are familiar with winning; Brookfield won the Marketing Excellence Award from CHBA last year for their Pathways in Caledon East community which we marketed, and Empire won the ENERGY STAR for New Homes Builder of the Year at the EnerQuality Awards in 2011 and was again nominated in 2012, demonstrating that they’re industry leaders when it comes to green home building.

I always enjoy these types of posts and seeing my clients and employees recognized for their success and hard work. Each time a client of ours is nominated, it’s a testament to the great things we do at BAM and to our clients’ hard work and dedication to building and providing Ontario families the best homes possible.

Congratulations again to Brookfield Residential and Empire Communities. (You can see all the finalists here.)

Go BAM go!

GTA Prosperity Slipping

08 Apr 2011 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in In The Media Tags: , , , , ,

Image via the Toronto Star

The Toronto Star recently reported that the GTA’s prosperity is slipping, as “Toronto’s economic success remains hampered by low productivity and long commute times compared with cities around the world.” The GTA ranked 8 out of the 24 cities studied, slipping down from 4th place just last year.

Gridlock remains one of the GTA’s top concerns, as all of us commuters can easily attest. Toronto came last among all the cities: our average round-trip commute time is 80 minutes, “worse than Los Angeles (56 minutes), Tokyo (69 minutes) and London (74 minutes).” This time is an average taken from all commuters, both drivers and transit users. Toronto has more drivers than other cities, in part because our transit system doesn’t easily link up with places outside the downtown core.

So what does this mean if you live in the GTA, whether it’s in downtown Toronto, North York, Pickering, Burlington, Brampton or Mississauga? It means that while the appeal of moving out of Toronto proper is still strong because of housing prices and spacing issues, moving out of Toronto is only becoming less appealing if you work in the GTA.

Do you live close to your place of work? What’s your commute time like?

Beware! Resale buyers’ agreements

24 Nov 2010 1 Comment

by John Amardeil in Activities, You Need to Know Tags: , , , , , , ,


Now that the federal Competition Bureau has successfully opened up the MLS system to homesellers without having to pay huge commission rates to agents, the TREB (Toronto Real Estate Board) has come up with another scheme to protect their exorbitant commissions.

Under the guise of offering better service, brokers are trying to convince prospective buyers to sign exclusive contracts with them. These contracts basically ensure that any home the prospective buyer offers to buy will be subject to broker commissions.

For example, if a prospective buyer finds a home offered through one of the emerging low fixed-fee or low commission brokers, who now have unfettered access to listings on MLS, that prospective buyer may sign a buyer agreement. If the agreement is signed, he won’t be able to buy that home unless the vendor agrees to pay more commission than he originally planned. Since many vendors are unwilling to pay more than what they initially planned, a lot of folks can’t buy homes.

So I urge you, before you consider signing contracts with brokers, to be aware of what you’re really getting yourself into. It may look good on paper, but we must ALWAYS read the fine print.

Be careful,
John Amardeil

Housing Market in GTA Staying Strong

05 Nov 2010 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in Activities Tags: , , , , , , , ,

After the surge of people searching for new homes in the spring and summer, the new home market usually slows down in the fall and winter. Yet here it is November and we’re still getting vast interest in our upcoming projects! This month, instead of things slowing down in terms of homebuyer interest and activity, we’re about to launch two major projects and getting huge interest. We’re doing registration campaigns and getting lots of names.

The GTA new home market is strong, and people are not only able, but eager to buy new homes. We’ll be selling lots of homes in late November and December – great news for homebuyers and builders alike.

The two main projects we’re now about to launch and getting registrants for are Pathways in Caledon East, a new family-friendly community by Brookfield Homes, and Weaver’s Mill in Georgetown, a young and fashionable townhome community by Eden Oak. We’re very excited to get these communities to the market.

All Hail Rob Ford, Toronto’s 64th Mayor

27 Oct 2010 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in In The Media Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Toronto has elected Rob Ford with 47% of the popular vote, a sign that Torontonians are angry at overspending in city hall. Ford has campaigned on ripping out streetcars, cutting city council in half, allowing garbage collection to be bid on by private companies, and scrapping taxes on dogs, cars and home sales.

“The grassroots are going to speak out today. They are fed up with the wasteful spending and we’re going to stop the gravy train,” says Ford.

But it won’t be easy. Ford won’t be getting council support for everything. That $60 vehicle registration tax will be history, and overspending in city offices will likewise be getting the axe. His biggest strength will be contracting out things like garbage collection, street cleaning and other things that will certainly be doable.

“The people of Toronto are united around the call for change,” Ford said on the night of October 25th. Just don’t expect him to fulfill all his promises and certainly not with any great speed.

Ford also plans to hire 100 more front line police officers, including 30 just for schools; graffiti will be removed from public places; traffic signals “may” become synchronized; curbs will be colour coded so people know where it is safe to park; subways will be fast-tracked, pending provincial approval; more express buses will be added; the municipal land transfer tax will be gone by 2012; property taxes will be kept in line with inflation; and no more TTC strikes will be permitted on short notice.

Rob Ford describes himself as a “fiscal conservative and social liberal”, but the emphasis is really on fiscal conservatism in his goal to cut back on “back room deals.”

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