A one-of-a-kind two-house family estate with a sports bar, a dressing room and a 14-by-29-metre ice rink. Standing on a 25-acre lot in the ski town of Collingwood, this hockey fan’s paradise has been featured on Sportsnet’s Hometown Hockey with Ron MacLean.
The history
In 2013, a family of four built two houses on this huge property: one for living and one for leisure. They fashioned the main home as a winter chalet and built a rink in the second one to host birthday parties, friendly hockey games and fundraisers for charities such as Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada—all while celebrating the country’s favourite sport.
Now that the kids have moved out, the parents are looking to sell the entire complex and downsize. Realtor Daena Allen-Noxon has fielded several calls from families with hockey-playing kids and even a few from hockey academies looking for new training facilities. “The scarcity of ice time in Ontario adds to the property’s appeal,” says Allen-Noxon.
The main house borders the Osler Bluff Ski Club and has access to a network of forested trails for skiing and snowshoeing. It has a sprawling front deck and an attached garage.
The foyer serves as a mudroom for snowy boots and leads to the powder room.
Moving down the hall reveals the living room. The owners placed their dining table here to watch evening hockey games on that big-screen TV above the fireplace.
Here’s the kitchen, which comes with stainless steel appliances, plenty of storage, a marble peninsula and a bespoke hanging hood fan.
This reverse view shows off the custom oak cabinets, which accommodate a second sink and a coffee station.
Upstairs, there are five bedrooms. The main suite overlooks the front yard.
This is the main bathroom, equipped with an elevated marble tub flanked by corner windows and a glass shower with a rainfall head.
Another bedroom features a massive bunk bed unit.
The home also has a finished basement with a fireplace, a guest bedroom and, yes, another giant TV.
The adjacent games room leads to the manicured side yard and deck via french doors.
Here’s a view of the entire property. Next up: an inside look at the leisure house up the path.
The leisure house’s crown jewel is its wood-and-polyethylene rink—covered with ice in the winter and transformed into a pickleball court for the summer.
Guests can take in games from this viewing gallery with its own kitchen, bar, TV and stone fireplace.
Another view of the gallery.
Above the rink is a dramatic loft with a wall-to-wall couch, an 80-inch TV and a ping-pong table as well as a gabled recess that currently holds an office.
Post-game, players can relax in this state-of-the-art steam room.
Here, even the bathrooms are peak Canadiana.
Next to the rink are a few essential amenities: a stainless steel fridge for Gatorade and a pinball machine to loosen up pre-game.
The owners built a full dressing room, with rubber floors for skates and enough stations to host an entire hockey team.
And, yes, the place comes with a brand-new Zamboni.
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TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
