SO YOU'RE ESCAPING ONTARIO

Wages are lower. That's most of it, and almost nobody says it out loud.

If you're bringing an Ontario salary with you, or you work remote, you've effectively arbitraged the country and you're going to do very well. If you're job hunting locally, budget for a pay cut and do that math before you fall in love with a listing, not after.

The other catch is health care access. Getting a Medicare card is straightforward. Getting a family doctor takes time. If someone in your family needs regular specialist care, look into that before you look at houses.

The honest list, collected from people who've told me:

The wind. Nobody warns you about the wind.

The drive to anything specialized. Certain medical appointments, certain shopping, most big concerts. That's Halifax, and Halifax is a couple of hours away.

How early things close. If you're used to something being open at ten at night, adjust.

And in the smaller communities, the visibility. People know your business. Some folks find that charming and some find it suffocating, and you genuinely won't know which one you are until you've lived it.

In my experience the ones who leave, leave in the first two years. Past that, they tend to stay.

You register on the provincial wait list and use NB Health Link in the meantime. Health Link is a real service and it's better than nothing, but it isn't a family doctor and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

This is the single thing people are most anxious about, and it's the one I can't fix for you. What I'd tell you is what I'd tell my own family: get on the list the week you arrive, before you've unpacked a box. The list doesn't care that you just got here.

Technically, yes. Twenty years from now someone will still refer to you as the folks who bought the such-and-such place.

Practically, no. "From away" here isn't a wall, it's a fact people mention the way they'd mention what street you live on. Show up to things. Buy from the local guy. Learn three names at the rink. That's the whole initiation and it works faster than newcomers expect.

The ones who stay outsiders are usually the ones who spend their first two years telling everyone how it was done back home.

If you've never spent a winter here, rent.

I'd rather you rent for six months and buy the right house than buy in August and work out in February that you hate the drive from where you landed. Renting also lets you learn which neighbourhoods you actually like, which is not something anyone can do from listing photos or a weekend visit.

Yes, I'm aware I just talked myself out of a commission. I'd rather have you as a client in the spring than an ex-client with regrets.

Yes. Regularly.

Not long ago I was working with a couple relocating to Canada. They didn't know our market, how our houses are built, or what a Canadian winter can hide. They found an older semi-split they loved, mostly because it fit the budget.

The inspection told a different story. Major foundation issue, and the snow had hidden every sign of it from the outside.

I told them to walk. No second guessing, no trying to make the numbers work. It was a bad buy.

They ended up in a brand new semi-split with a New Home Warranty for about $40,000 more, still comfortably inside the budget they'd walked in with. And yes, the bigger sale meant a bigger cheque for me. I'll take the awkwardness of saying that out loud over watching them inherit a six-figure repair.

That's the job. I get paid when you buy, which is exactly why you should pay attention on the days I tell you not to.

Often, yes. That depends on your lender, not on me.

What you need sorted is bridge financing: whether you can carry both properties for a stretch, what that costs, and what your lender wants to see before they'll agree to it. Have that conversation before you start looking, not after you've fallen for a house and find yourself doing math at midnight.

Get it answered early and you shop with a real number. Skip it and you'll either talk yourself out of the right house or write an offer you can't fund.

In a normal market here, a decent house priced properly sells in about a month at close to asking. That's not a pitch, it's just what this market does most of the time. If you ever get there, here's how I sell a house. My monthly market update has the current numbers if you'd rather check than take my word for it.

I bring it up because nobody else will. Everyone sells you the arrival. Almost no one tells you what the exit looks like, and honestly, knowing the exit is what makes the arrival feel safe.

The person in the show home works for the builder. They are often lovely and they are not on your side.

You want somebody reading the contract, the specs, the warranty terms and the finishing schedule with your interests in mind. And here's the part most buyers don't know: on most new builds the builder pays the buyer agent's commission, so having your own representation costs you nothing.

I'm obviously not neutral here. Ask anyone who bought new construction without representation how that went.  I've also written about why I always recommend an inspection on new construction, warranty or not.

More of them end up rural than they expected to, because that's usually the whole point of the move. Land, quiet, a shop, room for the kids.

What changes minds is the boring stuff: school bus routes, how long that drive really takes in a February storm, and internet service, which varies wildly from one road to the next.

If you do go rural, the due diligence is a different job. Well, septic, and the PID report, because rural listings regularly describe acreage that doesn't match the registered parcel. I pull the GeoNB data and read the PID before you write an offer, not after you've closed. That's my specialty, and it's the reason to have me on this particular kind of purchase.  More on how I handle rural and land transactions. 

Anyone who answers that in one word is selling something. I write a market update every month with the real numbers: inventory, days on market, sale-to-list. Read it and decide for yourself.

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