Moving in 3 months

[waseemf]

Dear all,

I am new to this blog and I would really appreciate if you can share with me your expertise in settling down in Mississauga . We have landed initially in 2008 and left the country trying to find a job while not in Canada which proven to be very tricky. Now we have decided to take our chances starting Q1 next year.

The following are some question that I have not been able to answer so far

Shipment
We have not declared that we will be shipping anything to Canada when we first landed. Now, if we were to ship simple things like, toys , books etc. do we have to pay tax?

Accommodation
I understand that will need to stay in a hotel may be the first week or so then try to find an apartment. Now the questions are:
-Will week be good enough to find an apartment and furnish it?
-If I am jobless (hopefully will find one soon) can I still rent or lease an apartment for long term ( ie. 6 months?- year) and what is the process.
-I have looked into different Internet sites; will prices be different than those in the real market? What would be an average 2 bed room in Mississauga?
-What is the average price of moderate furnishing for this 2 bed room or where can I find such prices?

Transportation
-I understand that I will need to get license, how long would that take , and until then can I rent a car for long period ( a month?) for a good price and what would be the range.
-Once I get the license, can I lease a car , while still jobless.
I know that's a lot of question , but I feel that I still have tooooo much to understand any way

Thank you again for your help

 

[Leon]

I don't know the rental market in Mississauga but a week is not a very long time to find an apartment. If you are lucky and find an empty one you can get right away, you might be able to get an apartment in one day but other than that, usually people move on the last or first day of the month so if you come before the end of the month, you might find an apartment you can move into on the 1st.

If you are jobless, you will have to convince the landlord that you can pay your rent. Do you have funds to live off so you can show a bank statement? If you have a credit card, that is also a good thing to show. In Canada, having a credit card might convince the landlord that you have good credit so you must be a good guy.

I don't know the price in the rental market in Mississauga but usually you can find apartments slightly cheaper than in internet if you look hard. When you arrive, get a newspaper and circle all the ads that interest you. Especially circle ads that don't name a price. Then phone them all.

Prices of furniture you can find at http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/store/etobicoke or http://www1.thebrick.com/brickb2c/jsp/index.jsp

Here's the info for drivers license exchange in Ontario: http://www.drivetest.ca/en/license/OutOfCountryDrivers.aspx You can drive on your license for a couple of months before you have to get the Ontario one. Before you leave, it's better that you do the following: if your license is not in English or French, get a translation of it or get an international license. Also get the police or license authority in your home country to write you a letter for how long you have been driving as they request on the website. It is better to arrange that before you leave than to find out later that you need this and now are in Canada and it's way harder to arrange. I don't know about car rental prices. You have to shop around. You can use this website: http://www.expedia.ca/daily/enc4105/cars/default.asp?rfrr=-55041 to help you find prices. I don't know if you can lease a car before you get a job. Like with any financial transaction, you would need to discuss that with the leasing company but generally when you first arrive in Canada you have no credit which basically means they don't trust you to make payments so they will probably not do it.