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Archive for the ‘Community’ Category

HUSH a finalist in prestigious builder awards for Oakville homes

Thursday, August 26th, 2010 by Dan Cooper

Featured in the photo are President and CEO of Hush Homes Naheel Suleman with Dan Cooper.

Congratulations to HUSH on its nominations for Project of the Year and Most Outstanding Production Home (two-storey, 2,500 square feet and over) for two of its developments in South-West Oakville. The Ontario Home Builders’ Association’s Awards of Distinction are major awards in which builders all across Ontario compete. Simply becoming a finalist is a significant feat. I’ve written in the past about HUSH’s two special enclaves of new homes that recently went on sale that offer French and English inspired designs, and some very unique features and homeownership packages.

Being nominated in the OHBA’s Awards of Distinction is just proof that these developments are something special for Oakville and area. HUSH is nominated for Project of the Year for both the Avalon and The Gardens at Coronation locations. In the Most Outstanding Production Built Home category, this exceptional builder has two home designs nominated – the Aubergine Palais and Lily of the Valley. Avalon in South-West Oakville includes 12 French inspired homes that are conveniently located on Lakeshore Road West, close to downtown Oakville and Appleby College. At Avalon, you can experience the city living of shopping and dining without sacrificing a private home environment. This is where you will find the Aubergine Palais.

The Gardens of Coronation feature 14 English-style homes that are steps away from Coronation Park and Lake Ontario. Some lots here have been designed to allow for a third-storey loft where you can enjoy spectacular views of the park and lake. And this is where the award-nominated Lily of the Valley will be built. While these homes are nominated in the Most Outstanding Production Home, HUSH is not your typical production builder. For example, the bungalows in each location can be completely customized to your liking, right down to the floor plan. And like all HUSH projects, these homes are loaded with top quality products and materials – hardwood floors, 10-foot ceilings, Wolf and Sub-Zero gourmet appliances, granite countertops, marble, and high-end fixtures by Kohler just to name a few of the luxury appointments that are standard in all HUSH homes.

HUSH builds their homes to exceed Energy Star standards and provides an extensive “green” package that offers additional solutions such as solar power and geothermal heating and cooling so you can make your home as energy-efficient and eco-friendly as you want. With homes ranging from 1,800 to 4,000 square feet, loaded with high-end products, quality construction and high energy efficiency, HUSH is offering a carefree lifestyle and a superbly maintained residence for as long as you own the property. The quality of these homes and the attention they are receiving from qualified judges for the OHBA’s Awards of Distinction is a testament to the great real estate investment opportunities that exist in the Oakville and Burlington areas.

If you are in the market for a true dream home in a spectacular location, you must check out these new homes by HUSH. To see what makes HUSH an award-winning builder, I encourage you to visit the presentation centre at 417 Lakeshore Road West. Visitation is by appointment during the week and open houses from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, or register at HUSH.CA. Or give my office a call and we will be glad to help you make the ideal selection – to optimize your enjoyment and investment. And good luck HUSH on September 21 when the OHBA announces the winners.

Dan Cooper is an award winning Broker with Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., Brokerage – the Number 1 Royal LePage Team for Canada in 2009. He can be reached at 905.338.3737, direct line at 905.849.3303 or through his innovative and interactive website at DanCooper.com. Be sure to catch the Dan Cooper Real Estate Series on DailyWebTV.com. For his free booklet How To Sell Your House For Top Dollar – Fast! or his Guide to Oakville Real Estate, please call the Dan Cooper Team.

Using the Internet to sell homes faster and for more money

Thursday, August 12th, 2010 by Dan Cooper

Dan Cooper TV logo

The mark of a good real estate agent is the lengths to which he or she will go to market your home. In today’s marketplace, it is not enough to merely place a few ads in the real estate section of the local newspaper. Advertising, of course, is important – and that is why I go big whenever I use traditional media. I consistently take out one and two page spreads in these sections. I also carefully select the most effective magazines – and again take the best strategic positioning within those publications to provide the maximum exposure for my clients.

But perhaps most important, I have been a leader in utilizing the Internet by developing a unique online marketing program. My DanCooperTV.com website was ahead of its time when I launched it a few years ago and it remains a dynamic element of my marketing strategy today. The video-based format brings properties to life, providing a much more striking impact than static images. Whether you are buying or selling a home, the opportunity to display a property through a live tour of the home accompanied by a voice-over description of the home’s unique features is a powerful tool. The seller is able to advertise their property in a whole new light and the buyer is able to take a comprehensive tour at their leisure and convenience. Professionally produced, this site offers an incredible venue like no other.

A good real estate website, however, should be more than just a vehicle for selling homes. At DanCooperTV.com, you will find a wealth of information about your area and some of the people in it – the retailers, businesses and charitable organizations that make Oakville and Burlington vibrant and engaging communities. See my entire educational series on home inspections with advice directly from the experts. You will also meet members of the Dan Cooper team, providing you with an opportunity to better learn who we are and our approach, to begin building that ever important open and honest relationship that needs to develop between broker and client. I want you to be comfortable with our team, to trust that everyone is working in your best interest.

If you haven’t visited DanCooperTV in awhile, take a look – and take a visual tour of some of the exciting properties we have posted on the site. We recently posted a tour of a spectacular mansion on two acres of country property on Trafalgar Road, just north of Highway 407. This is a home that many passersby have wondered about – and here it is on my website. It’s the new, cutting-edge approach to marketing homes and we’re leading this exciting trend. There are other developing technologies that we are looking into and I will talk more about those in the future.

In the meantime, for more information about how we can sell your home quickly and for top dollar, visit my website DanCooper.com or give the office a call and we would be more than happy to tell you more.

Dan Cooper is an award winning Broker with Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., Brokerage – the Number 1 Royal LePage Team for Canada in 2009. He can be reached at 905.338.3737, direct line at 905.849.3303 or through his innovative and interactive website at DanCooper.com. Be sure to catch the Dan Cooper Real Estate Series on DailyWebTV.com. For his free booklet How To Sell Your House For Top Dollar – Fast! or his Guide to Oakville Real Estate, please call the Dan Cooper Team.

Get the best price for your home during a slowdown

Friday, July 30th, 2010 by Dan Cooper

Canada’s residential real estate market will start to slow in the second half of 2010 after two quarters of strong price increases and sales activity, according to the most recent Royal LePage House Price Survey and Market Survey Forecast. While sales activity was strong in the first half of the year, it is expected to cool off for the third and fourth quarters with prices flattening.

This is how Phil Soper, President and CEO of Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., Brokerage, explains the situation: “We have seen an unusual pattern of activity in the housing market over the past 12 months, with the market experiencing a surge of activity and price increases that peaked in the fall of 2009 rather than spring. Early 2010 followed a more typical seasonal pattern with prices and activity peaking in the second quarter. An expected increase in the supply of homes on the market will now bring stabilization in prices and in some cities we will see both prices and unit sales decline towards the end of the year. This should not be interpreted as a severe correction but rather a natural reaction to the market having peaked quite early this year.”

The surge of activity in the first half of 2010 in Ontario was prompted by a number of factors, including an increase in interest rates in the spring, tightening of mortgage lending rules for first-time homebuyers and investors, and the lead up to the introduction of the HST. In June, residential resales in Oakville were down by 34 per cent compared with June 2009, but on a positive note for sellers, the average price showed a healthy increase of 19 per cent – $616,907 compared with $516,681 in 2009. And the luxury market continued to heat up recording 28 sales over $1 million, with six of those sales surpassing $2 million in June.

The Burlington area resale market reported a decrease of 15 percent from the same month last year, and a decrease of 6 percent from May of this year. The total unit sales for the first six months of 2010 are being reported at 18.7 percent higher than the same period last year, while new units listed are 20.7 percent higher than last year at this time, according to the Realtors Association of Hamilton-Burlington. A slower market brings increased inventory levels and fewer bidding wars, which creates opportunities for buyers who may not have been able to find what they wanted in the spring.

The key, especially during a slow market, is to deal with a broker who has a proven track record and is a consistent top performer – someone who you are confident will be able to sell your home quickly and for top dollar. Innovative marketing initiatives and investment, knowledge about the marketplace, commitment and exemplary service differentiate the Dan Cooper Real Estate Team. The result is that we are achieving accomplishments that illustrate the Dan Cooper difference. We are the Number 1 team in Canada for Royal LePage, which is a testament to our ability to sell homes fast in the Oakville and Burlington areas. In fact, we have been the Number 1 team for seven of the past 10 years. This is an accomplishment that does not happen by accident, but rather by design. Our dedication and commitment to selling your home, along with superior marketing strategies, have time and time again helped our clients sell their homes quickly and for top dollar.

We were also named Best Real Estate Agent and Best Real Estate Team in North Oakville Today’s annual Readers’ Choice Awards. The Readers’ Choice Awards are as grassroots as you can get, and being named Number 1 for both agent and team are proof that we are having a significant impact right here in our own community.

Dan Cooper is an award winning Broker with Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., Brokerage – the Number 1 Royal LePage Team for Canada in 2009. He can be reached at 905.338.3737, direct line at 905.849.3303 or through his innovative and interactive website at DanCooper.com. Be sure to catch the Dan Cooper Real Estate Series on DailyWebTV.com. For his free booklet How To Sell Your House For Top Dollar – Fast! or his Guide to Oakville Real Estate, please call the Dan Cooper Team.

Helping to make our community a greener place

Monday, July 19th, 2010 by Dan Cooper

Recycle Logo

Have you got a corner of the basement where you’ve piled all your old televisions and computer equipment? And every time you pass it, you say to yourself you have to cart it all away some day. On Saturday, you can do just that. You can finally haul all that outdated technology away, have some fun, some lunch and help a great cause. It’s the second annual Environmental Awareness Day sponsored by Tim Hortons and the Oakville Chamber of Commerce, in association with Kerr Village BIA and Home Depot Children’s Workshop.

The day again is this Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at 111 Cross Avenue, Oakville (Trafalgar Village). You will be able to browse through green exhibits by local vendors, enjoy great entertainment by DJ Central and the Toronto Argonauts cheerleaders, and a barbecue lunch courtesy of M&M Meat Shops. Proceeds are going to one of my favourite charities – Big Brothers Big Sisters of Halton. BBBSH continues to have a long waiting list of children who are looking for a positive mentoring relationship in their lives. Most of us, if we look back at our own successes, have had someone to guide us, offer advice, support and encouragement. However, mentoring is more than just that. Mentoring is also about the power of friendship; especially children who need someone to laugh with, share a dream with or just to hang out with.
Few of us may be aware that there are hundreds of youth at-risk here in our own community. Often, our comfortable and insular lives shield us from some very hard truths in our back yard. This reality, however, is only too clear to the great people and volunteers at BBBSH.

Saturday’s Environmental Awareness Day touches on two areas that I have become passionate about – supporting great local causes, especially organizations that are providing programs for our youth, and the green movement. As a real estate broker, I have become more and more involved in eco-friendly building and I am proud to be the broker of record for Halton’s first GreenHouse certified home built in Bronte Village by Greenbilt Homes. It’s exciting to be associated with the latest evolution in building and to be part of this critical movement of creating homes that will reduce our carbon footprint.

Achieving the GreenHouse Construction certification is a remarkable accomplishment and you can see what makes the home special by taking a virtual tour on DanCooperTV.com. Simply click on the video titled Oakville’s First Green Home. While you are on my website, also check out some of the video we shot at the Dan Cooper Celebrity Invitational Golf Tournament held last month at Glen Abbey Golf Club in support of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Halton. It was a lot of fun, featured some great celebrities and raised money for a very worthy cause.

Again, this Saturday at Trafalgar Village. Bring your outdated monitors, towers, laptops and televisions and help us make our planet a greener place … and have some fun and help a great cause at the same time.

Dan Cooper is an award winning Broker with Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., Brokerage – the Number 1 Royal LePage Team for Canada in 2009. He can be reached at 905.338.3737, direct line at 905.849.3303 or through his innovative and interactive website at DanCooper.com. Be sure to catch the Dan Cooper Real Estate Series on DailyWebTV.com. For his free booklet How To Sell Your House For Top Dollar – Fast! or his Guide to Oakville Real Estate, please call the Dan Cooper Team.

Readers’ Choice Platinum winner for best agent and best team

Friday, July 9th, 2010 by Dan Cooper

Thank you to everyone who voted to make The Dan Cooper Team of Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., Brokerage the Platinum winner for Best Real Estate Agent and Best Real Estate Team in North Oakville Today’s annual Readers’ Choice Awards. Of all the awards my team and I have won over the years, the most gratifying are those that are the result of the recognition we receive from people in our own community. The Readers’ Choice Awards are as grassroots as you can get, and being named Number 1 for both agent and team are proof that we are having a significant impact right here in our own community. I believe this recognition has been achieved for two reasons – our business success and community giving.

We are very active in Oakville and Burlington and that has provided us with a very high profile. In fact, earlier this year we were proud to have earned the distinction of being the Number 1 Royal LePage Team for Canada in 2009. This is our seventh top finish in the past 10 years and is a testament to a lot of hard work and a high degree of success for our clients. What it means for our clients is that they are with one of the best real estate firms in the country. Our creative marketing strategies are accomplishing two things – they are selling homes quickly and for top dollar.

So, the recognition by the Readers’ Choice Awards is in a large part due to the hard work we put into selling your home. We have developed innovative and carefully selected methods of showcasing your home for optimum exposure. These methods involve selecting the prime advertising spots in a variety of publications and using the Internet more creatively than any other broker. For example, my DanCooper.com website is bringing properties to life through a video-based platform. I’m proud to be one of the first to tap into this exciting form of marketing to provide you with a competitive edge when selling your home.

In fact, by June we had achieved a significant real estate milestone – we surpassed 100 homes sold this year. Reaching this level of sales so quickly is the primary reason we are the Number 1 Team in Canada for Royal LePage. The Readers’ Choice Awards reinforces the exposure we are gaining for your properties which also puts The Dan Cooper Team of Royal LePage in the spotlight.

Achieving a high community profile, however, requires more than simply being recognized for our business visibility. Being community minded is critical in today’s world. We have an obligation to give back to the community in which we work and live and I’m proud of the sponsorships and support we are able to provide to community causes and organizations – both large and small. These include the Oakville Hospital Foundation, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Comic Vision for the Foundation Fighting Blindness and the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts just to name a few. Building a strong community requires support from all of us.

Again, thank you to all who voted to recognize the role my team and I have been able to play to help make our community vibrant and healthy.

Dan Cooper is an award winning Broker with Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., Brokerage – the Number 1 Royal LePage Team for Canada in 2009. He can be reached at 905.338.3737, direct line at 905.849.3303 or through his innovative and interactive website at DanCooper.com. Be sure to catch the Dan Cooper Real Estate Series on DailyWebTV.com. For his free booklet How To Sell Your House For Top Dollar – Fast! or his Guide to Oakville Real Estate, please call The Dan Cooper Team.