August 2018

Buying a home for a family can be a challenge. To meet the needs of a growing, changing family, a home must be flexible in its layout, large enough for many generations, and safe for everyone from children to older adults. 

Home Amenities That Benefit Families With Children

Open Floor Plan

In a typical open floor plan, public spaces like the living room, dining room and kitchen are open and connected, with few or no walls in between. For parents of small children, there are many advantages to open floor plans. Adults at work in the kitchen can oversee children playing in the living room, dining room and beyond. In addition, open floor plans allow families to spend time together as they work on separate activities in separate spaces. For

Home technology is a modern amenity. Time, energy and labour-saving devices are becoming mainstream, in the office, at home and in the automobile. It's impossible to escape it—and why would anyone want to?

Smart technology has changed, and will continue to alter the way Canadians look at the world, and the way we live in our homes.

There is a difference between home automation and smart home features, however. In a sense, it is one of degree: Home automation is one aspect of smart home technology. It is the modern smart home that has become the model for the future. Smart home technology allows integration of a host of features from a single, centrally located wireless hub. It keeps the homeowner in control, whether from the next room or

Giving family members the ability to move throughout the home safely and enjoy every space to its fullest is important, and lighting is a key aspect of achieving these goals. Choosing the best lights and the strategic placement of each element helps set the comfort level and ambiance of your abode. Furthermore, energy-efficient lighting can dramatically reduce associated costs, especially when savvy owners follow this room-by-room lighting guide.

Illuminating Foyers and Hallways

You can often get by with minimal lighting in these areas when they aren't in use. Experts recommend recessed lighting or drop lamps with dimming features in high-ceiling foyers. Multi-option side lanterns with compact fluorescence lights amid dark hallways and stairwells

Selling a home in a rural area can be a challenge. Rural areas typically attract fewer potential buyers than urban or suburban homes, so finding the right buyer for your rural property may take finesse. With some planning and a little creative thinking, you can bring more people interested in buying a rural home and potentially speed up selling a home in the country.

Make Your Home Easy to Locate

Rural routes are not always well marked, and the streets are not always named. Buyers who cannot find your home may give up or get lost on the way to your property. Making it easier to find your home will remove some of the burdens from potential buyers.

• Mark Roads Clearly: Put up signs on roads that lack clear signage. Clear away any brush

When you walk into a person's home, you expect to see the young kids running through the house playing games. One spouse may be cooking the family dinner in the kitchen while the other is in the home office finishing up work before the weekend arrives. Yet family dynamics have changed over the past decade. It is no longer frowned upon to see the thirty-something young adult still living at home with their parents or find the aging parents living out their retirement years with their adult children, and when several generations live in one household like this, it is what is called multigenerational living.

Multigenerational homes have now become the norm.

Reasons for Multigenerational Households

There are several factors spurring the