For Sale!

Driving around the block this morning, I noticed more and more 'For Sale' signs around my neighbourhood. Bad news, because in this kind of economy, it means that more and more people are having distress sales, losing their homes to banks or down grading to smaller homes.

Infact my next door neighbour is caught in a catch 22 situation.....they bought the house they are living in about eight years ago. Then, two years ago they paid the downpayment for a new house north of Brampton. This new home is ready in April, and if they don't pay the balance installment and take the house on time, they will be fined $1000/- canadian dollars. At the same time, their home has been on sale for awhile now, and so far not a single buyer has come to see their house!

They need the money from the sale of their present home, to get posession of the new home. Banks are wary of giving new loans and peoples credit ratings have dropped due to non payment of credit card bills etc. Their asking price for their three bedroom, two bathroom home is $317,000/-. This is considered to be a middle class house. They also spent 35,000/- on new flooring, a new roof and doing up the basement. All necessary to sell the home.

Hope things go well for them! Overall, pretty dismal economic situation here. Nothing is selling, malls are empty and people are taking any kind of job they can get. Not sure how bad the situation is in India right now.

The only good thing...is that after three months of snow and minus temperatures..today the sun is finally out and it is 4 degrees outside. My daughter was so excited that she could wear a short sleeve shirt to school today. You don't miss things like that unless you are forced to wear long sleeves for three months running!

Last Sunday we went to a place called, Varl Dosa. A Tamil couple run the small place on Kennedy road in Brampton. Nice homemade food. We had dosa's, chicken fried rice and parathas with chicken curry. I give it a seven on ten. The sambar and chutney at the Saravana Bhavan is far better. Prices at the Dosa place were very reasonable, where as Saravana is pretty expensive for a vegetarian place.

The common restaurants here are Swiss Chalet, Montana's, Harveys, Kelseys and of course the usual McDonalds, Pizza hut etc.

Will try the restaurants and let you know how they were! Just the kind of experimenting I like!!