besthomesbc

Vancouver is not facing a housing bubble While Canada’s banks are tightening lending standards in a move to avoid a U.S.-style housing correction, experts say Vancouver’s robust housing market is not expected to face a severe price correction. Canada’s banks are in talks with the federal government about ways to curb mortgage lending in response to a “genuine concern” about the country’s housing boom and rising consumer debt levels, said TD Bank chief executive officer Edmund Clark... Read Full Story

Property speculation continues in Vancouver and Toronto IN FEW corners of the world would a car park squeezed between two arms of an elevated highway be seen as prime real estate. In Toronto, however, a 75-storey condominium is planned for such an awkward site, near the waterfront. The car park next door will become a pair of 70-storey towers too. In total, 173 sky-scrapers are being built in Toronto, the most in North America. New York is second with 96. When the United States saw a vast... Read Full Story

Vancouver Island home sales are up More homes are selling in Nanaimo, and at a higher price than this time a year ago. A total of 62 units sold in the city last month, a 13% increase from a year ago, with the average selling price up 6% to $360,799, according to the latest sales summary from Vancouver Island Real Estate Board. As the largest city in the region, which spans Vancouver Island north of the Malahat, Nanaimo outperformed the regional average in January, based on VIREB sales... Read Full Story

Vancouver's house prices may rise some more in 2012 The Bank of Montreal poured cold water on the idea Canada’s housing market could be headed for a crash, suggesting that prices are only “moderately high across the country.” “Expect the housing boom to cool rather than crash,” BMO’s chief economist Sherry Cooper and senior economist Sal Guatieri said in a report published Monday. “While the housing boom is unlikely to continue unless mortgage rates drop much further, neither is it likely... Read Full Story

Canadian house prices fell in November 2011 Apparently the only way isn’t always up. Canadian house prices dropped in November for the first time in nearly a year, according to the monthly Teranet-National Bank house price index released Wednesday. The 0.2 per cent drop followed two months of flat prices, and was the first decline in the index since a “brief correction during the three months ending November 2010,” said National Bank senior economist Marc Pinsonneault. The national... Read Full Story

Edmonton has Canada's most affordable housing Edmonton enjoys the most affordable housing of Canada’s six major metropolitan regions, according to a study released Monday. The International Housing Affordability Survey looks at housing in cities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand along with Hong Kong. It found that among Canadian cities with populations above one million, Edmonton has the most affordable housing. Windsor was the most... Read Full Story

Lower Mainland property prices increased in 2011 Housing prices slumped in the second half of 2011, but real estate markets in the Lower Mainland ended up for the year overall. Of course, Vancouver’s real estate marke t played a significant role. The gain was bigger in the western half of the region, with the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reporting detached house prices typically rose 11.2 per cent for the year to $887,000. Of interest is that the hottest gain was a 34 per cent... Read Full Story

Numbers released by the Canadian Real Estate Association on Monday show that sales volume was up 2.2 per cent in all of 2011 compared to 2010, and the average price for a house inched 0.9 per cent higher over the course of the year – to $347,801 in December. Here are a couple of graphs to show price movement since 2000, and also the difference in house prices between cities over the 2010/11 period. Average Canadian house prices Read Full Story

The global housing market suffered its worst performance for more than two years in the third quarter of 2011 according to UK property consultancy Knight Frank. The company’s Global House Price Index rose by just 1.5% in the year to September 2011 – the worst level recorded since the second quarter of 2009 with house prices falling in more than half of the countries monitored in the third quarter. Not surprisingly, Greece was one of the worst-performing countries, with prices falling 4.1... Read Full Story

Recent condo sale in Chinatown My real estate column in the Vancouver Sun featured property sales in downtown Vancouver , Kitsilano and North Vancouver . Vancouver Sun January 14th, 2012 1704 – 550 Taylor Street, Vancouver Type: 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment Size: 785 sq. ft. B.C. Assessment, 2012: $498,000 Listed for: $499,000 Sold for: $490,000 Sold on: Nov. 30 Days on market: 42 Listing agent: Natalia Antosh at HomeLife Benchmark Realty Buyers agent: Seth Baker at Royal... Read Full Story