Blog by Betsy Carstairs

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Vancouver Housing forcast

CMCH, Canadian Mortgage & Housing Association, with The Royal Bank put on a information session for us realtors Friday Ap 13th. I like going to this breakfast meeting as it is interesting to check if my experiences are in sync with the other neighbourhoods  in the metro Vancouver area. I get new information & build on my experiences selling. Of interest were the speaker Steve Ressler's update on the population of Canada now @ 33,476,688. BC is sitting at 4,400,057 up 7% over last year with 12,000 new people to BC in 2011. Another point of interest was the statistics he noted on condo restrictions. He stated that his facts equated a +6% in value if the condo allowed pets & a 5% added value to those condos that allowed rentals. As I had just sold a client's apartment that had a strata imposing both these restrictions it made sense that this apartment experienced a negative sale price over comparable sized apartments that allowed pets & rentals. All in all a good tune up on the market & a bit of a forecast into this year. It was also reassuring that BC unlike the US is looking forward to another year with a balanced market ie  equal listings to sales.