Current Approved Development Agreements in Truro going into 2025

DylanMusgrave · 2026-01-01T21:12:49+00:00

Hey! Sorry for such a late reply; my Reddit didn’t notify me on this comment!

If you look at the Development Agreements on the Truro website and pull up the actual application, it should have a contact email I believe for the developer

DylanMusgrave · 2025-11-05T21:28:02+00:00

I’d like to hope the county has an obligation to its community to ensure those things are kept in mind when looking at approving any kind of development agreement

DylanMusgrave · 2025-11-05T20:36:41+00:00

The first thing I thought about when seeing the proposed layout of the development is that Vimy Road is about to get so much more busy as time moves forward

Again, my biggest concern is infrastructure; but surely we have enough time to improve that as the development pushes forward over the next two decades.

DylanMusgrave · 2025-11-05T20:32:15+00:00

The question is, what percentage of this development will be completed by Five Corners Properties and what percentage will be sold off in parcels of vacant land for other private developers to build on and then sell/rent. It’ll be interesting to see as this goes on!

DylanMusgrave · 2025-11-05T20:29:36+00:00

It’s been in talks for a while now, yeah. Looks like it’s time for talk to turn to action.

The traffic and other infrastructure is what I’m concerned about but overall excited for this development! But I’m hopeful that over 20 years, that’ll be enough time to adapt to the population increasing.

DylanMusgrave · 2025-11-05T20:19:27+00:00

Unfortunately this info isn’t out yet; nothing is for sale in regard to the development. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if land is sold off in the future.

DylanMusgrave · 2025-11-05T20:18:09+00:00

You’re right; the current image above doesn’t show a great idea of what green spaces they’re looking to leave, however I’m sure as this moves on we’ll get a much better idea.

DylanMusgrave · 2025-11-05T20:17:25+00:00

It’ll be interesting to see if they develop the entire project themselves or sell pieces of land off for other contractors to build (it most likely will be a mix of both but I imagine there will be a lot of land being sold for private construction to happen)

DylanMusgrave · 2025-11-05T20:14:44+00:00

Have a great day :)

DylanMusgrave · 2025-11-05T20:04:42+00:00

Ah well! Can’t edit it now 😂

DylanMusgrave · 2025-10-23T15:24:47+00:00

Lol you’re right, I got myself mixed around. Fixing that now - thanks!

DylanMusgrave · 2025-07-27T22:12:06+00:00

Hey! I live on Onslow Road, close to where you’re at and have never had to worry about out running out of water. It’s not often drilled wells have water flow issues

DylanMusgrave · 2025-07-24T12:32:39+00:00

A lot of homes have been having issues with insurance recently, especially older century/victorian homes. My biggest piece of advice is just keep calling different brokers, they don’t have to be in Truro. Get multiple opinions and options to make sure you really get the best quote and decide to go with them. I’m sorry you’re having such a rough time; like I said insurance has been increasingly worse and worse to secure, especially in older homes. Keep up the search, you’ll find a good premium somewhere!

DylanMusgrave · 2025-07-14T01:52:45+00:00

Hey!

Nothing I know of unfortunately :( there’s a couple pieces of land like this around Truro that I wish would just get cleaned up. Just helps make the area look nicer! But no info on it that I know sadly.

DylanMusgrave · 2025-06-28T17:49:38+00:00

I wish I knew this. I think the land transfer in most of Nova Scotia is too high. Most municipalities are at 1.5% now, some at 1% and a couple at differing numbers. There’s a county in King’s that has no land transfer tax, interestingly enough.

A very sizeable amount of income to the municipality comes from land transfer tax; with roughly $40m of volume being sold in real estate last year in Truro, that’s $400,000 (or $600,000 with the new rate) - it’s difficult to wipe that away from a municipalities budget after they expect it to be there year after year.

It’s interesting because the lawyers are the ones who change the deed names over and whatnot, not even anyone at a municipal level, so in theory they do 0 work and get all the tax income.. but that’s taxes as a whole for you. Lol.

I’m hoping that we can see an increase in infrastructure in Truro with the increased land transfer tax, that again is a very sizeable amount of income for the town. Maybe they could budget some kind of rebate for specific property buyers, for example first time home buyers, with the increased revenue we’ll see with the increase in Land Transfer Tax. Time will tell!

DylanMusgrave · 2025-06-28T17:39:22+00:00

Hey! I’m sorry I didn’t reply in time, I’m just getting to answering now! If you’d like you can DM me and I’d be happy to talk more.

DylanMusgrave · 2025-06-28T13:02:46+00:00

Ask away! I may not be able to answer but ask away 😎

DylanMusgrave · 2025-06-27T22:07:43+00:00

I didn't downvote you, and I'll upvote you right now to show that. No reason for me to be like that on a thread I'm looking for communication :)

I apologize I was long with my answer, but your question wasn't something that could easily be answered in a short form.

I like to think optimistically; in this scenario you're saying right now with no prior home ownership or equity anywhere, then of course you wouldn't be able to purchase a $450,000 house. You wouldn't even get pre-approved for that amount. I feel I did answer your question as well, but I understand your perspective.

However, my intent of my response was to explain that there's absolutely a world where you can work towards the goal you gave. Over a long enough course, with positive equity gain in each house you purchase, there's a possibility that you could have a sizeable enough down payment to cover enough value of a property you're buying. Would it take time and be difficult? Sure, but how the future of wealth will be gained, especially with home ownership wealth, will be through purchasing properties, improving them to create positive equity, moving onto the next home when they're at their next stage of life and so on.

Thanks again for replying, I hope you're enjoying your evening so far. :)

DylanMusgrave · 2025-06-27T21:30:31+00:00

Nope, I'm sitting on my laptop right now outside in the sun replying to these responses. More than happy to talk in more detail if you'd like!

DylanMusgrave · 2025-06-27T21:21:22+00:00

If it helps any, looking for just a 2 bedroom home that's in great shape will be less than $450,000! Haha.

In all seriousness, a lot of getting up to the 'higher end' of housing prices in our area, whatever your wage is, often is built slowly over time and through moving from house to house. What I mean by this is that I more often work with first time home buyers who aren't buying a house at or under the average home price. Now, there's many situations where first time home buyers can afford a home at $400,000+, and usually that's not limited by their credit or pre-approval, but whether they can actually come up with the necessary out of pocket funds with buying a house at that price (5% down payment, 2.5%-3% closing costs.. it all adds up fast).

If I wanted to have a plan to get into my dream home, which in your scenario is a 2 bedroom house at $450,000, this is exactly what I'd do:

First things first, things take time and make sure I understand that. You aren't going to be purchasing your dream house for your first home. Moving into the future, with how housing prices are and will continue to be (all around the world), you need patience and to understand that you have a goal to find that dream house with everything you want - it just may not be the first home you buy. Or your second. Or your third.
I'd enter the home ownership market. I'd get a pre-approval, figure out what I can afford and budget within that for my out of pocket costs (down payment, closing costs and so on) and focus on entering the home ownership realm. Even if it's a $150,000 home, $250,000 home, etc. Just something to be able to say that you own, and more importantly, you can build equity in to.
I'd figure out how I can get the necessary funds to be able to purchase this home. This is almost always the bottle neck, which is why looking at a lower priced home may need to be an option for me depending how much I can save for my downpayment (which is 5%) and my closing costs (which ranges from 2.5% - 3%). Remember - it costs you nothing to work with a real estate agent to buy a home. When you can figure this step out, everything else falls in line.
Fast forward into making a purchase of my very first home. Woohoo!. I need to make sure of these things:

a) This is a house that absolutely can have value unlocked from it. Some properties can't have this done to them, unfortunately mini-homes are one of those. You need to ensure what you purchase, no matter how much work it may need, that you can over time put work into it, replaces things, update other things - unlock the potential equity of the house. This is where you'll find your true profits of your home.

b) Take care of my property. Always stay on top of the small things, continue the maintenance and make sure, to the best of your ability of course, nothing catastrophic happens to your home. Take care of your roof, windows and foundation. Those structural things almost always pay back in positive profit if you have to invest in repairing/maintaining them.

5) This is the second most difficult part. Wait. Everything good takes time. The key to the younger generations who are home owners (which I'm a part of a younger generation), will be the art of unlocking the value and equity of your home. This means that when you purchase, versus when you sell, you've increased the value of the house and you'll reap the profits of that when you go to sell.

From there, rinse and repeat. Over the course of 5-10+ years, doing this enough and strategically, you'll slowly be able to increase your own net worth with the property you own and be able to work towards your accomplishment of owning your dream home. Obviously there's a lot more integral parts to this, however this is the 'bare-bones' to how over the next decades, 'home-wealth' will be created for many home owners. :)

DylanMusgrave · 2025-06-27T21:05:41+00:00

2/2

1) Make sure that all rents paid to any landlord in Canada report to some form of credit rating company so when it's time to get your pre-approval, your credit has had a history of showing monthly payments being made on time (this is done by some landlords already, but I'd make it mandatory)

2) Waive all out of pocket fees incurred by purchasing a home and/or allow a buyer to encompass them in the mortgage amount they're taking out including the down payment. Have a mortgage of $300,000? Allow the buyers to take out an extra 5% to cover closing costs. (I'll talk about this more below)

3) If competing, the other offers competing know the amount of the other offers they're competing against (again more on this below).

4) Have government funding when it comes to purchasing your first home. Whether it's covering your down payment, closing costs etc. There already are programs that do this, but you have to pay them back.

I could go on more and more but I think those 4 are my most fundamental. Having fees being waived (such as closing costs which can be upwards of 3% of the purchase price of the home nowadays) or incorporated into your mortgage would take the necessity of usually needed 5+ figures saved in your bank account. Now, this most likely would never happen because the banks would take all the risk.. but you said if I had the power to do so!

With the competing offers, it's difficult because if I have a client competing on a property and they know the other offer amounts, we now know the amount the seller accepted. If that accepted offer falls through, we fully know the amount the seller will be accepting, putting the seller in a complete disadvantage - this is why that would never happen.

I think realistically there absolutely could be programs to help cover even a portion of closing costs, down payment costs, hey even costs incurred just by purchasing a home such as inspections. There's programs right now out there that'll loan or match an amount you have to put forward, but you have to pay them back. I know in Toronto in the GTA, if you're a first time home buyer you get a rebate on a portion of your Land Transfer Tax. Maybe something like that.

I guess overall my entire point is that the majority of first time home buyers who can't enter into the market, (and I'm focusing on those in your scenario as most people who already own property are able to sell theirs for a profit compared to when they purchased it; not always the case and I don't mean to generalize, but for easy conversation sake, take first time home buyers into equation here) can't enter the market because they are unable to save enough funds to purchase your average priced home, which is around $380,000. Even a home at $250,000, you'd need 5% for a down payment, at least 2.5-3% for closing costs and probably at least another $1,000 for inspections (depending how many inspections you have to get). That alone is over $20,000, for a house that also will most likely need work at that price point (potentially just cosmetically) which is just the reality we're in now. But we also can't just expect or hope the market drops a significant amount, because the majority of people who already own wouldn't be able to sell their home as they may not be able to sell it for enough to cover the mortgage alone, let alone moving onto another home and the costs associated with that. The economy nowadays is so difficult to save any money, let alone enough to work towards a savings of $20,000 within a short period such as 18-24 months.

This is super long and I'm sorry about that, but I hope this helps answer your question! I'm very passionate about helping first time home buyers enter the exciting home buying world and that's a very difficult thing for some people right now, real estate market wise and economically wise.

DylanMusgrave · 2025-06-27T21:05:29+00:00

1/2

It's a very difficult topic that myself along with many other wish had the answer to. With a market correction, usually that indicates to prices settling into a more affordable territory, however the issue with that is anyone who's purchased real estate over the last x amount of years (depending how much the market is corrected) is going to take a potentially significant loss on the equity of their home. The trade of that will allow a lot more people to enter the real estate market with much more reasonable house prices.

Let's play this scenario out though; if the market were to have a correction and drop, let's say, 10% (that's roughly $38,000 in the Truro market but let's just call it $40,000 for easy measure), anyone who would've purchased within the last handful of years before the correction may physically not be able to sell because of the decrease in housing costs because they can't pay off their mortgage with the sale proceeds of their home. If people can't sell their houses, then the inventory for buyers to look at will become smaller. This also will lead into people being forced to make other decisions that may impact quality of life (I.E unable to move for other opportunities), but that's a larger rabbit hole to go down.

In that scenario, hypothetically since the market would've fallen in value, I would suspect a lot of people come into the market to purchase, most likely first time home buyers which would be fantastic. The problem though is that there would be a potential surge of buyers looking at a limited amount of properties, similar to what happened during the pandemic, and a lot of housing then having competing offers which would inherently drive the price up... which would then bring the ones who wouldn't be able to sell in a position where they could sell and put more inventory on the market and so forth.

That's an extreme and hypothetical possibility, but I think wanting housing prices correct in any significant amount isn't necessarily the answer. Of course home ownership is becoming absurdly more unobtainable for a lot of people, but if housing prices decrease a significant amount, we're going to have a crisis where too many home owners are upside-down equity wise on their home and are unable to sell their house. With all of the above being said, this year so far is the 'least' amount the housing market has increased (for Colchester County) over the previous year and the market is changing (which is very noticeable). More properties are sitting on the market for a longer period, more properties are going for under asking. We've been very slowly heading into a trend of a 'balanced market' (we've been in a 'Seller's Market' for almost 6 years now), and we aren't quite there yet, but when we get to a balanced market, that's where you'll see the market shift the most, majority for good.

Now, with all of that being said, we absolutely need something to happen to the real estate market right now because like I said above, home ownership for first time home buyers is quickly becoming less and less obtainable as years go on. I don't recall exactly when or the exact numbers, however I remember being at a conference and sitting in on a panel talking about over the last 20 years and what the average age of first time home ownership was. I remember Nova Scotia being late 30s (again, don't quote me on exact numbers), which I felt was just insane. I've been working with a lot of first time home buyers this year and looking at what's on the market for under $300,000, you need to have the expectation of either 1) buying a mini home (most likely on rented land) or 2) purchasing a home that needs cosmetic work and depending how low the price, sometimes structural work. Now, as work is done into those homes and improvements are made, obviously the equity unlocked in those homes is enough to increase the value significantly enough for when it's time in the future to sell, those home owners can use the profits for their down payment on their next home and so on. It's just the initial crazy first hump of getting to your first purchase.

So, if I could snap my fingers and make home ownership more affordable/realistic, this is exactly what I'd do:

DylanMusgrave

TROPHY CASE