Found 4 blog entries tagged as Cindy Stephen.

Canadian billionaire Daryl Katz - Not Your Average Edmonton

By Cindy Stephen

Canadian billionaire Daryl Katz has homes in Los Angeles and British Columbia, but his beautiful riverfront mansion in inner-city Edmonton truly illustrates that there’s no place like home.

Katz is chairman and chief executive officer of the company he founded in 1992, The Katz Group, which manages a vast empire of drug store and retail pharmacies. He grew up in the Alberta capital, the son of a pharmacist who founded the Value Drug Mart chain in the 1970s.  He attended Jasper Place High School and obtained a law degree from the University of Alberta in 1985.  

Now worth an estimated $3.7 billion, according to Forbes, Katz also owns the Edmonton Oilers of the…

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THE CHANGING REFUGE OF HOME

By Cindy Stephen

If there’s a silver lining to the global pandemic, it is this:  home and family have never been so important.

Home has always been our refuge, but COVID-19 has forced it to also be our workplace, our restaurant, our gym, our theatre, and our neighbourhood pub.  After the initial shock of the first lockdown, when the world was put on pause, the real estate market did what no one could have predicted.  It took off, because people forced to spend nearly every waking moment at home wanted a better space for themselves and their family.

Big on the list of must-haves in the last 18 months are home offices or flex space on the main floor with lots of natural light. Zoom calls and online learning at the…

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TURNING HEADS - Not Your Regular Alberta Bunkhouse

By Cindy Stephen

A French Chateau just off Cowboy Trail west of Calgary has turned a lot of heads the last seven years or so, cause it ain’t your regular kind of Alberta bunkhouse.

It’s an 11,000 square foot stone-clad mega-mansion on 80 acres of spectacular ranch land in Rocky View County. It lies unprotected by trees, prone to the curious eyes of all who pass by on the straight stretch of highway between Bragg Creek and the Trans-Canada Highway. The rural landscape around Calgary is dotted with opulent houses but this one….this one is as fantastic as it gets. It has even commanded national attention and was profiled by Canadian journalist Jen Gerson in Maclean’s Magazine.

As it was…

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THE ALBERTA ADVANTAGE - Alberta still prevails when it comes to investing in real estate

BY Cindy Stephen

Whether single or multi-family, residential real estate sales in Calgary, the fourth largest city in Canada, remains robust due in part to affordability and reasonable taxes.  Alberta was the first Canadian province to fully re-open, post-COVID and has also possessed a can-do attiBtude. 

June statistics from the Calgary Real Estate Board (CREB) show that the average price of apartment-style condominiums in Calgary is sitting at $260,000 while the average single-family home price is hovering at just under $500,000.   These prices are before GST and of course, part of the Alberta Advantage is that there is no Provincial Sales Tax (PST).

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