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University grads prefer Richmond Hill and Oakville, but Milton has gained the most between 2001 and 2006

The municipalities of Richmond Hill and Oakville have the highest percentages of residents with university degrees, diplomas or certificates in the Greater Toronto Area, according to data from the 2006 census released yesterday by Statistics Canada.

About 42 per cent of the residents in both towns hold university degrees at the bachelor’s level or above. Richmond Hill officials, including deputy mayor Brenda Hogg, expressed surprise at the numbers.

“York Region has always had a high percentage of well-educated residents. I did not realize that so many were situated in Richmond Hill!” Ms. Hogg wrote in an e-mail.

The two municipalities have a greater proportion of university grads than Toronto, where about 37 per cent have degrees. But the big city needn’t feel intellectually inferior - it leapfrogged over Markham for third place in the region.

All four municipalities rank well ahead of the national and provincial averages - only 23 per cent of Canadians hold university degrees, and only 31 per cent of Ontarians.

The booming town of Milton gained the most university grads between the census tallies of 2001 and 2006. About 28 per cent of Milton residents had university degrees in 2006, up from 23 per cent in 2001.

Where the scholars are:

Percentage of residents in 2006 with a university certificate, diploma or degree:

Richmond Hill 42%
Oakville 41.5%
Toronto 37.4%
Markham 36.8%
Aurora 35.8%
Mississauga 33.9%
Vaughan 30.8%
ONTARIO AVERAGE 30.7%
Burlington 30.3%
Milton 28.0%
Newmarket 26.3%
Whitby 24.5%
Pickering 23.7%
CANADIAN AVERAGE 23.0%
Ajax 22.3%
Brampton 21.4%
Caledon 21.3%
Oshawa 12.1%

– By Megan Grittani-Livingston of the Globe and Mail; Source: Statistics Canada

Patricia Eales will take a petition of 8,000 names to a GO Transit board meeting next week. She wants partial refunds when trains are 20 minutes late.

Oakville rider who began online petition criticizing rail service has become a powerful voice for change

They’re late for work and late coming home to pick up the kids from daycare.

Now GO riders are going to be charged more for what many are calling “atrocious” and “abysmal” service, says an Oakville woman who has become the voice of frustrated commuters across the region.

Pat Eales will take an 8,000-name online petition to the March 14 meeting of the GO board of directors. She plans to ask the board to postpone the fare increase planned for March 15 until GO can run its trains on time.

“Most of the people I rode the trains with, we felt our complaints were being dropped into a bottomless bucket. Now at least people think there’s a collective voice,” said Eales yesterday.

The petition asks GO to refund 50 per cent of fares when trains are late by 20 minutes or more, and to provide better notification of delays.

“We don’t mind paying a good fare for a good service. Just give us good service,” she said.

Eales started the petition Feb. 11, after train delays made her late arriving to work five days in a row, at a job she’d only started in November.

A busy single mother, Eales says an earlier train would put her at the office more than an hour ahead of her start time, but she wouldn’t be able to leave early.

Driving doesn’t make sense because by the time she learns of delays, she’s usually on the train platform, having paid her fare.

“There are obviously people who agree with her,” said GO spokesperson Stephanie Sorensen. “GO and the board are taking her concerns very seriously.”

The transit agency reported that 83 per cent of its trains ran on time last year, down from about 90 per cent in 2006.

Although it’s adding 27 faster locomotives that can pull an extra two cars, that won’t have an impact until later this year, after crews are trained and platforms lengthened throughout the system.

The only new locomotive running so far is temporarily assigned to the Lakeshore line.

Twelve-car trains that can accommodate an additional 300 people each won’t be in service until the summer and will be brought onto the Milton line first, Sorensen said.

Eales’s petition has helped “because now people are paying attention to the situation,” said Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn, who has persuaded Queen’s Park to appoint a customer service expert to a vacancy on the GO board.

“We need somebody who knows how to deal with people. We need somebody at the decision-making level looking at this through a customer service lens,” he said.

“You can’t have an economy the size of Toronto’s and not have a good train system. It doesn’t make any sense.

“If you look at any other jurisdiction around the world, it’s just not optional,” said Flynn.

– By Tess Kalinowski, Transportation Reporter for the Toronto Star

UPDATE: GO SAYS NO 11,000 TIMES

Board refuses to grant fare rebates for delayed trains despite petition from dissatisfied riders

They listened, but Pat Eales isn’t convinced GO Transit’s board of directors heard the deafening hue and cry of frustrated commuters demanding better service and a refund when trains are late.

“They just kept bringing up the same old excuses – the weather, the switches – and that it wasn’t their fault,” the Oakville mother of two said after tabling copies of an online petition at yesterday’s board meeting, supported by almost 11,000 dissatisfied riders.

The petition called for a 50 per cent refund on fares when trains are delayed 20 minutes or more. Eales also asked the board to freeze fare hikes until trains run as scheduled.

But her requests fell on deaf ears. A 15-cent-per-ride fare increase on a single adult ticket goes into effect today. Board chair Peter Smith confirmed there will be no refunds, something he said would spell disaster for the system in the throes of a major expansion.

GO Transit relies on the fare box for operating funds, so essentially riders themselves would be picking up the cost of the refunds.

Eales, however, did walk away with assurances that an advisory board will be established to handle service and reliability issues.

Smith later invited Eales to join that committee. She hasn’t yet decided if she will.

A plan for an improved communication system to advise riders of cancellations and delays was also approved.

During her presentation, Eales called on the board to fix glitches, even those that are out of its control. Tracks, switches and crews are under the jurisdiction of CN and CP, which own the rails GO uses.

“Stop thanking us for our patience and apologizing for any inconvenience you may have caused us. `Sorry’ doesn’t help when we are late for work or late home at night.”

Eales, a single mother of two teens who lives in Bronte, told the Star her patience with the transit system ran out in February after GO problems made her late five days in a row for her new job as an executive assistant at a not-for-profit academic research centre. She had tried emailing GO Transit authorities to complain about the system but got the run-around. She filled out a ridership survey but no one contacted her.

Unless the system becomes more reliable, she warned the board, transit users will get back into their cars.

Eales urged riders to take advantage of the “silent rebate” available at the customer service kiosk at Union Station. Staff offer vouchers when riders complain about late or cancelled trains.

With ridership increasing by 10,000 a day over last year, “we’re the victims of our own success,” Smith said in response, noting that improvements are on the horizon to ease the crunch.

About 170,000 people ride the trains on a typical weekday. “We don’t have the capacity on our trains or lines,” he said. “We’re building that capacity, but it takes a long time.”

Frances Chung, GO’s director of financial services, reported on major work underway to improve the aging signal and switching system. A 33-kilometre third track is being built on the Lakeshore corridor from Hamilton to Oshawa to increase capacity and reduce delays. New locomotives capable of pulling 12 cars are coming on board, as are new bi-level coaches. Crew staffing is also being increased.

Eales’ petition is to go to the Ontario Legislature next week.

– by Leslie Ferenc of the Toronto Star

The following post is by Mike Cluett. Please visit Mike Cluett’s Milton blog site here:

A couple of days ago, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty released his third budget. This is something unheard of for a minority government being able to have this many budgets without being defeated. In many cases, they’re doing a good job and while most Canadians don’t want an election, they seem comfortable with our MP’s in this minority situation.

Here are a couple of items that I pulled from the budget. All in all, it is a pretty sound plan for the coming years. Some of the big highlights for towns and cities are as follows:

To continue reading this column, go to Mike Cluett’s Milton Blog.

The following post is by Mike Cluett. Please visit Mike Cluett’s Milton blog site here:

At this point, Milton doesn’t have all day GO Train service to Toronto with only a few trains in the morning and a few in the evening. Many of the commuters that use the Milton station come from outside the area in Cambridge, Guelph and northern parts of Oakville and Burlington. The provincial government recently announced a large investment in GO Train services of $100 million dollars.

Unfortunately none of those dollars have made it to Milton…

To continue reading this column, go to Mike Cluett’s Milton Blog.

Competition is fierce in real estate so as part of his branding, Mississauga broker Parwesh K. (PK) Sabharwal wears a snappy hat with his business attire.

New Realtor Realities: Many in the GTA go above and beyond to earn loyalty because competition for clients has become so stiff

One agent packs up and stores a client’s massive shoe collection to minimize clutter. Another puts up a mother and her kids in her basement or provides amateur marriage counselling. And many more now deliver seemingly unusual services in an attempt to stand out in the fierce GTA real estate market.

“A real estate agent cannot afford to have an ego,” Mississauga broker Parwesh (PK for short) Sabharwal says. “In this cutthroat competitive market, one must meet all kinds of demands, even if they seem funny or weird.

“I even sat and packed up 100 pairs of shoes for one client and carried those big boxes all the way to her tiny basement,” recalls Sabharwal of one such extra service.

“Packing shoes isn’t part of my job description,” he says with a laugh. “But since the shoes were an eyesore – in the entrance of the house, and the lady wasn’t getting that – I offered to help out.”

Helping out is now often taken for granted, increasingly, by demanding clients, says this ReMax broker. Another factor is the number of agents in the game.

Phil Soper, president and CEO at Royal LePage, says the lure of real estate has caught on even with the younger set. The company now recruits many graduates from universities during their campus recruitment drives in Toronto.

And in such a market, there’s no dearth of unusual requests, agents say.

“A client who had daughters asked me to find out if the adjoining house to the one that they liked housed young boys. And if there were boys next door, then they wouldn’t buy that house,” Sabharwal says. “Awkwardly, I did comply by knocking on the next-door house, and casually inquiring about their family composition.”

Agents say the business is one that’s heavily based on referrals and clients will remember agents who go the extra mile even years after their house sells.

“Good service is being increasingly used by brokers as a way to distinguish them from the competition,” Soper says. His company coaches its agents on good practices.

Sabharwal says in the world of fancy packaging, branding is important. So he dons a matching hat with his business suit.

When he meets a client, he gives them a big docket of marketing material, which contains a huge photograph in that attire– smiling in a standing pose with his fancy P. initial engraved alongside each page describing the services he provides.

He gives clients a two-pack tutorial CD and testimonials from other clients he’s served. In addition he provides a colourful, two page-newsletter called Sabharwal’s Neighbourhood News.

To be an agent also means to be blessed with tons of patience, says Susan Taylor, a 20-year veteran, who jokingly admits she could easily fill in as a “marriage counsellor.”

In some cases marriages have broken up and couples have decided to sell a house. Taylor recalls one such incident where she spent more than two months coaxing, cajoling and counselling the husband to get him to sign papers, so that she could sell the house.

Taylor, a Royal LePage agent, says the dynamics of the real estate game have changed. Twenty years ago it was more of a nine-to-five job.

“The Internet and the advent of TV home improvement shows have raised awareness levels and it’s almost as if they (buyers) want houses to be perfect,” she says.

It all means that agents need to work extra hard to make sure the house is good to sell.

Taylor says if that means pouring in some extra bleach in (the clients’) dirty kitchen sink then that’s fine. She draws the line, however, when it comes to cleaning toilets. Instead, she has called cleaning services and paid for the services.

Taylor isn’t alone in that regard. Jillinda Greene, a longtime ReMax Hallmark agent in the Beach area says staging a house is very important. She has paid the bills for a florist or even rented paintings which cost her between $500 and $1,800, depending on the size of the house.

But Betty Durocher gives a whole new meaning to the term open house. In July 2002, this Royal LePage agent from Newmarket moved some of her clients – a mother and two children – into her own basement for two months. The trio shared Durocher’s kitchen and other facilities upstairs.

“The mother had bought a townhome but could not afford a place in the interim period, and not many rentals were available for such a short time and I just knew she couldn’t afford it,” says Durocher.

The agent’s retired husband at times also cooks dinner for clients, or babysits children while she takes the parents out.

Extra services don’t surprise Soper, who says consumers have a right to expect good services as they pay a considerable fee in commissions.

Agents say that commissions are under pressure and many in the market work for less than 5 per cent.

Not surprisingly, Internet sites that allow people to list their homes and eliminate the agent completely are growing steadily. Gabi Fish is vice-president of the Canadian online home-selling site, propertysold.ca. Fish says many home sellers don’t want to pay costly commissions. The website – barely two years old – garnered 1.81 million unique visits (12.5 million page loads) last year, higher than what it got when it started in 2006 (1.1 million unique visitors).

It sold 394 properties last year compared to 119 in 2006. Fish says listings in Toronto, the website’s largest market, have increased with the GTA area getting 340 listings this year, compared to 152 in 2006.

But agents say the Internet cannot replace the human element of being able to service clients in unique circumstances.

Linda Morgan, a Niagara Region real estate agent for Royal LePage, tells the story of a single mom with multiple sclerosis who was living on a disability pension that she helped — first to sell her house, and then buy a new one.

The house where this mom and her son were living was in danger of being lost for nonpayment of municipal taxes. Morgan called in the help of her husband and his friends who repaired it so that it could be put up for sale. After selling the house and finding a condo that fit her client’s needs, Morgan found out the lady wasn’t qualifying for a mortgage, so she worked with her own bank to see that through.

Morgan says she also paid her own money for the remodelling of the bathrooms because the owner couldn’t and then, with countless trips to the local MPP’s office, and the March of Dimes, the owner was able to get a grant finally approved that repaid this money back.

CROWDED FIELD

Despite the increased competition in the market, more and more people want to become licensed real estate agents.

» The Real Estate Council of Ontario, or RECO, the regulating body for agents in Ontario, says there has been a 20 per cent overall increase in the number of registrants in Ontario since 2005, with the agency processing more than 400 applications for new registrations each month. In 2003, there were about 300 new applications per month processed by the agency.

In 2005, Ontario had 40,665 registrants with 11,675 of those coming from Toronto (M postal codes) and 26,792, which included Toronto and Brampton, Durham, Mississauga, Oakville, Milton, Orangeville, and York. In 2007, Ontario had 49,429 registrants with 12,472 of those coming from Toronto (M postal codes) and 29,222, which included Toronto and Brampton, Durham, Mississauga, Oakville, Milton, Orangeville, and York.

As of Feb. 1, 50,000 agents were registered with RECO in Ontario.

» An increase can also been seen (in the past three years) in memberships with the Toronto Real Estate Board: 2005 – 22,953; 2006 – 24,894; 2007-26,861; 2008 – a further 185, taking the total number close to 27,046.

» ReMax says it has 8,540 agents in Ontario and Atlantic Canada. (nationally 17,600).

In 2007, of the 751 agents it added to its roster, 445 were in the Ontario-Atlantic region, which was the largest growth for ReMax globally last year. As well, in 2006, of the 1,200 new agents, 650 were from the Ontario-Atlantic area. This region has been growing by 400 to 600 agents on average per year, with growth ranging from 5 per cent to 10 per cent over 10 years.

Sources: Real Estate Council of Ontario, Toronto Real Estate Board, ReMax

– by Rakshande Italia of the Toronto Star

Ron Cauchi, president of Mattamy Homes’ Stelumar Advanced Manufacturing plant, shows off the enormous facility, which can handle the construction of 10 houses at any given time.

Weather problems don’t affect construction since these houses are assembled indoors

It’s a bitter and blustery day on the western edge of Milton; with the wind chill it feels like -18C.

But Brent Bennett is without hat, coat or gloves as he works to install windows and doors in a house under construction.

That’s because Bennett and his co-workers at Mattamy Homes’ Stelumar Advanced Manufacturing plant are building homes indoors, for the nearby Hawthorne Village on the Escarpment site.

Bennett, the lead hand in back framing, has worked in construction for 21 years all over Canada and has had to contend with a variety of conditions, such as “being up to your knees in muck one day on site and then having it all frozen over the next day.

“And we all have to deal with shovelling our driveways, but just imagine having to shovel out a construction site.”

In comparison, he says, building a home in a factory is heaven.

“There are no rain days, no snow days. It’s climate controlled. There’s an advantage to working with dry lumber.”

The cavernous Stelumar facility on Tremaine Rd. south of Derry Rd. produces a new house a day and 10 are in various stages of progress at any one time. Each day at 4 a.m., the moving production line advances the houses – 600,000 pounds worth – to the next work station.

Since it was launched last summer, more than 60 houses have rolled off the Stelumar line and on to waiting foundations. As many as 220 houses a year will be built there over four years.

“Six months ago, this was pretty hot-off-the-press stuff. We didn’t even know if we could do this,” says Stelumar president Ron Cauchi.

There were a few bugs to work out. Initially, the skidding system that moves the homes down the line wasn’t able to handle the weight of 10 houses and needed adjusting, and the roof-hoisting mechanism, which allows for roofs to be fully assembled on the floor and then lifted into place, needed to be developed.

While factory-built homes aren’t a new phenomenon in North America, this facility is a breed apart. Unlike modular builders, which build their homes in sections, then ship the pieces to the site for assembly, the Stelumar homes roll off the line in one piece, with cabinetry, light fixtures, electrical and plumbing systems, and even paint already in place.

“This has nothing to do with modular,” Cauchi says. “These houses are extremely architecturally complex with multiple roof lines, dormers, wraparound porches and lofts.”

Then, there’s the way they are shipped, on a specialized, motorized transporter.

“There’s another difference from modular homes, which are put on a flatbed truck and shipped to a site,” Cauchi says. “This is a pretty complex piece of machinery. It’s like the platform that carries the space shuttle to the launch pad.”

For the one-kilometre, 15-minute journey from factory to building lot, the homes are shipped on a private road within the Mattamy site. The houses could be sent along public roads, Cauchi says, but it would require permits, police escorts and disruption of traffic to accommodate the wide, slow-moving load.

About 200 of 300 homes slated for 36- and 46-foot lots at Hawthorne Village on the Escarpment are being built at Stelumar, and the designs are identical to the homes being built on site. (Homebuyers don’t get to choose whether their homes will be site-built or factory- produced.) Eighteen different models are being produced, each with up to six different elevations.

“There are three, first-floor layouts typically and three choices of second floors, with options like bay or bow kitchen windows and second-floor laundry rooms,” Cauchi says. “It’s pretty darn close to custom building. The choices buyers have are mind-boggling. It’s not at all cookie-cutter manufacturing.”

Cauchi says there are various reasons why Mattamy, the province’s largest builder, has taken to factory building, as well as continuing to construct the conventional way. (Cauchi is quick to add that the site-built homes are of comparable quality.)

“The primary driver is customer satisfaction. It’s (Mattamy CEO) Peter Gilgan’s passion,” Cauchi says. One of the biggest issues with consumers is reliability of closing date, he says, and the factory approach means construction is not affected by weather conditions that cause delays on conventional building sites. “You can keep building even in a blizzard.”

There’s also the issue of quality – in a factory environment, building materials aren’t being exposed to the elements, which may cause lumber to warp. And timing is dead on. Because temperature and humidity can be controlled indoors, drywall mud, for example, dries exactly when it’s supposed to.

The factory approach shaves 70 days off building a house the conventional way – a new home can be turned out from the factory every 11 days. Another two to five weeks are allotted to complete the on-site work, such as bricking the house, steps, porches, hooking up utilities and landscaping. (Building code regulations and weight issues require bricks to be installed on site.)

At the plant, workers have a safe, comfortable environment, don’t have to worry about losing income or making up time due to weather and their tools are in the same location, day after day. The problems of construction site theft are eliminated. And because the workers (100 building crew and 15 office staff) are Mattamy employees, the builder doesn’t have to rely on outside trades.

Currently, it costs more for Mattamy to build the houses indoors than on site, but Cauchi says Stelumar’s mandate is not to cut costs – it’s about improving customer satisfaction and serving as a research and development lab for new technologies and products.

“Today, it operates at a premium but tomorrow, the plan is for a customer satisfaction at neutral cost; to produce the homes at the same cost as on site.”

Mattamy launched a pilot factory in Cambridge a few years ago where homes were built inside an old aircraft hangar.

Those houses were built exactly as they would have been on-site and finished only to the drywall stage before being shipped out. The line didn’t move and trades had to be scheduled, rather than working simultaneously at designated work stations.

Mattamy continues to operate a manufacturing facility in Cambridge, which supplies Milton’s plant with prefabricated wall and floor panels.

The walls are built on 24-inch centres rather than the usual 16, but are stronger because of the rigid polyurethane foam insulation. Value engineering (designing products at the lowest cost while maintaining quality) and computerized design and manufacture allow for optimized load bearing through aligned floor joists, studs and roof trusses, Cauchi says. The timberframe structure itself is more than strong enough to meet requirements. The rigid foam adds a structural strength bonus.

The engineered design also maximizes heating and cooling efficiency as ducts from the basement furnace can be lined up to run straight up to the attic, cutting the distance hot or cool air has to travel.

Rigid foam insulation is usually found only in high-end custom homes, Cauchi says. It would be cost-prohibitive for Mattamy to hire people to spray foam in site-built homes, but the prefabricated panels used in the plant are cheaper. Fewer wall studs and tightly controlling waste mean the Stelumar homes use 25 per cent less lumber. Over the factory’s four-year life span, producing 800 to 900 homes, an estimated 40-hectare woodlot will be saved, Cauchi says.

When Hawthorne Village is finished, the factory will be recycled, disassembled, then set up at another Mattamy site.

Several such factories are in future Mattamy plans, though locations have not yet been announced. Cauchi says they will be large sites with hundreds of lots.

All Hawthorne Village homes are built to Energy Star standard. “In fact, these are better insulated than Energy Star,” he says.

BY THE NUMBERS

220
Number of houses the Mattamy factory can produce annually. Ten are in production at any one time, with one new house produced every 11 days.

76,000
Factory size in square feet.

115
Employees at the plant.

70
Number of days shaved off conventional site building.

1
Kilometre between factory and building lots.

600,000
Weight in pounds of a fully loaded production line.

25
Percentage of lumber saved over site-built homes, due to tight control of waste and reduced need for wall studs.

5
Similar plants Mattamy is considering for the GTA over the next five years. Milton plant will be disassembled and moved to a new site.

Written By: Tracy Hanes of the Toronto Star