At first we thought we could just scan the internet and check out the places we liked. That seemed to be going well and we sort of adopted Steve Birkic's homepage for finding good places. He has this cool thing were you can save searches on his VOW area and when new ones come on the market, his site emails the listings to you. The other great thing about his site is that he has every listing available, not just his own. Plus he's your one-stop shopping go-to guy. No matter who is listing the property, you just call Steve and he sets everything up. So, in a round-about-way, we sort of adopted Steve.
After quite a few viewings of various places, we saw the townhome we wanted and told Steve we were interested. Then came the package of papers. Tons of papers to go through. Me, being the detailed one of our duo, thought it would be best if I read this book-o-documents. And with no fight from the other end, I took out my highlighters, sticky-notes, different coloured pens, and a huge notepad and started reading.
After going through every strata meeting minute since 2004 and their bylaws, I realized that this might not be our dream home after all. One of the main reasons we wanted a patio was to have a BBQ on it, and one of the first bylaws was "Use and/or storage of barbecues is not permitted." Then, a bylaw was amended around early July of this year stating that no pets were allowed except for "a) a reasonable number of fish and small aquatic animals, b) up to two caged birds." Being a loving cat owner, this was unacceptable. But also being a responsible loving cat owner, I looked for this before even going to see the townhome, and on the realtor fact sheet it did indeed say "Cats: Yes; Dogs: Yes".
Once again, this is where our Steve has come in so handy. Just say the words "This is a deal-killer," and he'll get right back to you, usually with good news.
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