EDMONTON REAL ESTATE @EdmontonRealty

The new real estate protectionism is misguided  By Cam Good, Vancouver Sun⁠ In the last two months, we've sold over 700 condos in Toronto. Sixty per cent went to Mainland Chinese buyers. In meccas like Richmond, 98 per cent of the hundreds of homes we've sold are to buyers who are Chinese. Even in White Rock, we sold 35 per cent of a new condo tower to buyers from Mainland China. For a new market like White Rock, that's a shocking number. As the North American media has just recently picked up, buyers from Mainland China are a driving force in our real estate market. The staggering truth is we've seen just the tip of the iceberg. There is a rapidly growing middle class in China which is just now beginning to realize they can afford homes abroad. Chinese buy Canadian homes because they care about nothing more than their kids, their kids' education and real estate. They also want a safe haven for their wealth. These are some of the push factors. Pull factors are t...

Fall in love while shopping for a home, but do it carefully!!! First-time homebuyers should behave like investors because that's how they'll save money and ultimately live a happier life, says Don Campbell, a Vancouver real estate expert. "If you prefer not to save money, then think like a homebuyer," says Campbell, an investor who analyzes and writes about the Canadian real estate industry. And while it's tough to approach your first home with your brain instead of your heart, Campbell recommends looking for certain criteria in the area you like that will encourage you to make a wise decision. "You fall in love with a house in a neighbourhood that has a future and not a past," he says. "Buy in an area where the property values will go up." Buying close to a train or LRT station is a good idea because those properties are predicted to rise in value 15 per cent more than similar properties that aren't near a station, he say...

During The 2007 Boom Days, Investors ASKED For Another Pre-boom Buying Window… Is It Here, Or Not? How Are You Deciding? Greetings blog subscribers, It is time for me to be a little bit blunt and I apologise in advance. This weekend changed me, it changed me because of the research I was doing, it changed me to the point that I had to write this unscheduled post. In the 1990's Albertans thought it was too late to get into the real market (the downturn had just occurred). In the 2000's, Albertans thought it was too late to get into the real estate market (the downturn had just occurred). At each point there seemed to be as many reasons NOT to invest, as there were reasons TO invest. Yet the market took off and the brave investors did incredibly well. During both those periods, people outside of Alberta were the first to see its opportunity and they snapped up the cash-flowing deals long before most Albertans themselves awoke to the fact that they were li...