****MiSC EXCLUSIVE: Things get real Official!****

EXTRA! EXTRA! So the big news last week was that Clay Aiken suprisingly came out of closet and so did Lindsay Lohan (ok neither were much of a surprise to anyone who has a pulse) but this week your favourite blog MiSC (Moving into Seaton Creekside), has the scoop of the week for you. Seaton Creekside has "come out of the closet" per se. Above is what u think it is...Yup thats it!! You're right!! You Got it!

The residential plans for Duffin's Heights have confirmed that URFE creek, part of Duffin's Creek is where our kids and their kids will be swimming and fishing and flying kites with the family! To see the residential plans for the developments from Lebovic Homes, the Ontario Realty Corporation, Coughlan Homes and of course our dear, dear Mattamy Homes please visit our very own Moving into Seaton Creekside Forums.

You can view the site plans here first!!


But the goodies will be forum members only. So please take a minute and sign up for the forums. They're FREE and a great way for everyone to share information!!

Mattamy Home builder of the Year says the OHBA

If winning the J.D. Power and Associates award x 3 wasn't enough, Mattamy homes took home the honour of being the 2008 Home Builder of the Year Award from the association.

So you ask, "What does it take to win this prestigious award?"

The Toronto Star explains:

The Builder of the Year award is based on home buyer surveys and judging of aspects such as sales and marketing, floor plan design, community service, industry support and the ability to adapt to changing needs.

Bravo and kudos to Mattamy once again for putting the competition to shame!
They definitely know how to rack up the awards! Maple Leafs take note!

As well, this weekend Mattamy Homes has announced the Fall Special Savings Event where they are slashing prices to bailout all of the US financial institutions underwater!! Wait a minute, this sale has been going on for months now! :/

An "official" Announcement!.......(well not really)

Above is a picture of the sales centre site taken this afternoon. I spoke to a very friendly uniformed guard (pictured above) whom they have hired to monitor the site and asked if he knew when the construction would be done and he replied, "in about 2 weeks." When I asked him who told him that and if it was his boss he said, "Umm...Me...thats what I think." With a smile I said goodbye and he waved as I pull out of the lot.

So it looks like its official, he has made the announcement that in about 2 weeks the sales centre will be done...construction that is....and after that we can wait longer for grand opening while the sales centre building itself depreciates in value while the world prepares for an economic dive.

View the latest pics from the Sales Centre site here at the Creekside forums.

Luckily, we can also look forward to what transpired in this months Seaton Advisory Comittee meeting which re-adjourned this month after taking the summer months off. As soon as the minutes of that meeting have been posted I'm sure we'll have more insight as to what will happen for 2008.

Sorry for the sarcasm false hope in this post, theres just nothing much to write about...again...

We are the Champions, My Friend!

Back-to-back Champs, Mattamy Homes, took the crown once again in 2008 to complete the 3-peat for the J.D. Power and Associates trophy. For the 3rd straight year, Mattamy Homes has been number one in satisfying its new-home buyers.

Now, how 'bout we get the ball rolling on Creekside, Mattamy, and you'll have more satisfied customers to vote for you next year!!?!?! Novel idea huh?!

Furthermore,

The study also finds that the proportion of homes delivered "defect-free" has increased in the GTA market-up from 8 percent in 2007 to 12 percent in 2008. Builder quality efforts have resulted in a reduction in the total
number of construction problems noted by buyers-down to 21 per home in 2008 from
23 per home in 2007.

See the entire article in the Seaton Creekside Forums.

Much Ado About Soil...

Mattamy recently filed for "an exemption to the Fill Topsoil Disturbance By-law" that could would help Mattamy and other developers to get the ball rolling with their Seaton residential projects. Ultimately this could help determine how soon the Sales Centre will open. To find out if the motion was passed by the city click here.

Thanks to member kf240 of the Seaton Creekside forums.

In other news, the city of Pickering won praise and "kudos" at the 2008 Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in June.

"In a nationwide competition that recognizes the very best of Canadian municipalities' effors to create more environmentall responsible and livable communities, Pickering took home the Sustainable Comminity Award for Planning for its groundbreaking Sustainable City Project."

To read the entire article courtesy of the 24 hours newspaper click here.

Grand Opening...

After speaking to a Mattamy rep, she has confirmed the construction of the sales center over on Brock Rd. Also, when asked about the probable grand opening date, she gave me the inside scoop on what is happening and their target timeframe. To find out about what she had to share I invite you to join the newly developed ...

Moving into Seaton Creekside Forums

Happy Canada Day everyone! Since its July 1st I had to drop some Grand Opening news...for the forums and Seaton Creekside.

Having said that, the forums are now open! Please join (registration is FREE and easy and only takes a minute to complete) to help develop an online resource for the community!!

**You must register to the forum to view the posts!**

Updates and Everything Else

Thanks to Tina for filling us in that land clearing at the "Creekside" site is underway as well as the delivery of a few trailers to the site have happened. This is probably going to be the Sales Centre site that we'll be getting familiar with in the next few weeks. At least something is happening, the Mattamy website has had nothing new to offer in the past 2-3 months for the Seaton crowd.

...

I've started fiddling with some free Forum servers. I'm hoping to have something up in the next few weeks as I work out the format. I want to keep it simple with room to expand as our needs do as a community. We will be needing a good forum to share info and ideas as more is revealed about Creekside. Stay tuned for the link to the forums on the main page.

www.seatoncreekside.com

...

I went to check out another development by the Monarch Group known as Evergreen. They boast the most green and environmentally friendly community to date. This is what they are selling in Toronto's "popular" Midland Avenue and St. Clair Avenue area (btw...there's nothing exciting in the area save for a Price Chopper, McDonald's, and a Cemetary...but its a 2 minute drive to the Kingston Rd./Bluff's strip...i'll give them that). Nonetheless, they offered details of all of the environmental standards in the building of their community and in each individual home. I'm hoping many of these standards pop up in the Seaton Homes as we all try to decrease our carbon footprints, minimize our waste, energy use and affirm our social responsibility to the environment.

They're looking for $487,000 and up for 30' detached homes topping out at $509,000 for about 23-2400 sqft. Townhomes starting at the $350s in various sizes of about 2000 sqft. Purchase of a unit includes: hardwood engineered oak on the mainfloor and stairs, central air, 5 appliances, energy monitor and $5000 in upgrades for 30' single buyers. Not too shabby for a bonus package but considering these singles are half-a-mil I'd expect those upgrades to be included.

Opening day they had about 20 singles and 20 towns available for sale, with more phases to follow. Opening was at 11am May 24th, I popped in at 11am and was #65. Oh and I didn't buy anything! lol...I'll see what Mattamy has for me first.

Reinventing Suburbia aka 905 Going Euro

An article with discussion on the state of the 905 "revitalization" plans found in the May 31st edition of the Toronto Star.

"...In North Pickering, local officials are salivating at the impending
development of the Seaton Lands, future home to 70,000, already billed as
Canada's first planned, environmentally sustainable community..."

Click Here to view the entire article on thestar.com

Blowout Sale at Mattamyhomes.com!!

Hurry! Act Now! Mattamy is slashing prices left and right!!

I've been trying to follow the trends in the real estate market and come up with my own ideas of what has been happening:

• the recession is taking its toll on the re-sale homes market dropping every month since the start of the year.


• new homes prices aren't expected to suffer as much due to drops in borrowing rates

So with those two points we see Mattamy is offering discounted prices in various communities including Newmarket, Cambridge, etc. Does this show that the new homes market is probably on the same course as the re-sale market? I'd say yes...the past few years you wouldn't find Mattamy discounting many homes save for a few closeout lots...so now we have the #1 discounting lots around $10k and probably a bunch of bonus dollars for upgrades with sign-on.

Does that put us in a good place come grand opening? Will we be seeing incentives from the get-go considering they have to get this whole project off its feet?

Are we buying at the right/wrong time only to lose money on our investment?

Stay Tuned!

*note: I have no experience in the whole real estate business/market, etc. so none of what I say can be taken as gospel but feel free to add a comment if you have some insight into the market and where its going!!

p.s. I'm out of the country till the 22nd so if there are any updates that I may be missing out on please post up a comment!! Keep me in the loop!

"The Best Thing Since...

...Sliced bread." #$%!?!?!

That's what Mattamy is calling the new town of Seaton (or maybe themselves?) in what is part of the fresh, new ad campaign for 2008. I found this full page ad in the current New Homes free magazine on the last page of the Mattamy pull-out.

I don't know what has got into their water (maybe its the 2 J.D. Power & Associates awards, etc.) at the Mattamy HQ but claiming to be the best thing to happen to new home building is like HONDA saying their cars are redifining automobiles...they're not. Or maybe they just hired Kanye West to head the marketing department. Anyways, I feel the ad is on the arrogant side and there is always much more to be desired in mass new-home building before anyone claims to have changed the game.

So the ad goes on to explain that,

"50 years ago,
Kids knew exactly,
what to do
when told to "Go Fly
a Kite."

Seaton Coming Soon.
A Brand New Town.

The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread.*

*Based on our shiny trophies


So thats my editorial on the new ad...I really just picking on little things but it just took me by surprise this morning.

Look What I Found!

Found this on the Sustainable Pickering: Seaton site, unnamed, unlabeled and just sitting there, probably never viewed by anyone unless you clicked every link on that site (this is what I do on night shifts). So another one of these colour-coded maps. This one is a bit more useful than the last one I posted.

Guess which colour belongs to Mattamy Homes?

Blue you say? Nah that belongs to Lebovic Homes.

Well ...

Click on the image above to find out where Creekside really is...and how close to the creek we're gonna be!

Ok...now that you've seen where the Seaton Creekside site will be the entire map is located HERE and shows the developments all the way to the 407 colour-coded to who owns the land (including more Mattamy and Lebovic sites north of Taunton). It surely looks like Lebovic will be the larger new home builder in the area with more sites but what do I know I'm just counting coloured blocks.

Leave your comments and tell me what you think of the sites!

Planning Seaton One Slow Step at a Time

So the news has been slow lately so I dug up some boring stuff to read.

I'm sure it's a tough task to plan a new town and the City of Pickering holds meetings every so often attended by the Seaton advisory committee.

The last meeting was held on February 20th, 2008 and the minutes of the meeting reveal some of the plans up for discussion.

Highlights (or low-lights) include:

• Discussion of whether to plan Seaton with a population of 70,000 or a more realistic 54,000 with intensification occurring over time
• Metrus and Lebovic Developments submitted their subdivision plans, no mention of Mattamy although they have reps present
• Interest from retailers to expand to Seaton
• Seaton has the opportunity to be innovative and be a community with integrated shopping
• UOIT/Durham College may build a site in Seaton
• 2 High Schools planned by the School Board -- questioned if it would be enough, they are awaiting the final population goal
• Alternative sources of energy (i.e. hot water heaters/district hot water heating) would be a draw and is being studied
• The Mayor suggested that planned big box retailers at Brock Rd. and Taunton Rd. were not preferred over prestige employment
• a GO station has been planned for the area but no precise location has been announced
• they would like to attract enterprises involved in research, development, production, sales and service of new, modern, efficient, "alternative energy" technologies and related services to the area. Strongly suggested was a "Green" theme
• shopping services that would blend into the area's cultural heritage vs. big box retail
• Green, Green and more Green!

If you want to read all 6 glorious pages contained in the minutes of the February 20th meeting visit

Sustainable Pickering: Seaton (Requires Abode Acrobat Reader)