One of my favourite endeavours while I was Homes Editor at the Ottawa Citizen was creating the Buyer’s Guide to New Homes.
Over the course of a year, I researched the new-home buying process, including following several buyers through their journey. I also got to act as a buyer myself on an inventory home that was being built by Cardel Homes, making all the decisions a home buyer would from choosing the lot and floor plan to what features, finishes and upgrades it would have – all to get the experience of being a new-home buyer. I just didn’t have to actually pay for it.
My research was presented as a seven-part series of 16,000+ words that ran over successive weeks in the Citizen’s Homes section, giving readers a step-by-step rundown of what to expect and plan for when it came to buying a new-build home. The series was later packaged as a standalone magazine that is now available as a downloadable pdf on my other website, All Things Home.
It was extremely rewarding to undertake this project and see how well it turned out. Although things like pricing are now out of date in the magazine, most of its information is still highly relevant.