Peeling back the layers of Squamish’s residential real estate boom

There’s a difference between house and home. The former is just a structure, a construct of wood and concrete, insulation and siding, shingles, nails and glue, something picked over by inspectors and showcased by realtors. It’s an early stop on the often expensive, always exciting and potentially defining continuum of personal success that typically fulfills itself through property ownership.

A home, meanwhile, is still a house, still has those fundamental characteristics. But it’s a house in full. Embellished by décor, charged with life and aglow with the resulting experience, a well managed and responsibly purchased home is a reflection of its inhabitants, a vehicle for their commune and sanctum for their happiness.

Jill and Dave Daniels are making their way down that spectrum. They’ve been in their home at the foot of Garibaldi Highlands for a year, but have owned it on paper for only a couple weeks. Together, with their 17-year-old son and their dog Kona, they made their way to Squamish from Ontario, renting at first and then wading into an explosive housing market, striking up a personal bond with their realtor and zeroing in on their $300,000 piece of the family dream. They’re not sure if they’ll stay, what with David’s career path lush with transfer opportunities, but, just the same, they make up a portion of Squamish’s shifting demographics, a good chunk of which are owed to the housing boom of the past several years.

Montreal top property in new Monopoly game

Montreal has been voted the most expensive property to buy in a new international version of Monopoly, edging out major tourist destinations like London, Paris and New York.

The capital of Latvia, Riga, was chosen as the second most expensive property, capturing the other sought after dark blue real estate spot.

The new board game, called "Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition," is using cities rather than streets. Montreal and Riga will take the place of the highly-sought Boardwalk and Park Place properties.

Retailer's new owner hires Brookfield to cull portfolio

MONTREAL - The new owner of Hudson's Bay Co. has hired a unit of Brookfield Asset Management Inc. to shop some of its flagship downtown Bay stores and former headquarters to potential real estate buyers.

HBC spokeswoman Hillary Marshall confirmed the 338-year-old retail giant, bought by NRDC Equity Partners of Purchase, N.Y., last month, has engaged Brookfield Financial Real Estate Group to do a "big-picture analysis" of HBC's real-estate portfolio with an eye to selling it if values are good. The portfolio consists primarily of six downtown Bay stores and the 32-storey Toronto building that rises from its flagship 900,000-square-foot store and, until recently, served as its head office.

Brookfield Financial recently advised Canadian National Railway on the $355-million sale and leaseback of its down-town Montreal headquarters.

Q1 2008 Toronto Real Estate Sales Drop 21% Over Last Year

Last week we released our Q1 2008 Move Smartly Housing Report which offers a detailed summary of real estate sales by neighbourhood. Readers can subscribe to the report at www.realosophy.com

The average sale price for a home in Toronto for the first quarter of 2008 was $410,862, a 3.3% increase over the same period last year. The median price increased by 6.1% to $330,000. The big news in 2008 has been the significant drop in the number of homes sold. Sales have declined by 20.9% over the same period last year.

Sales volumes showed very little growth between 2004-2006. Sales increased suddenly by 13.5% in 2007 with much of the increase being attributed to the 40 year mortgage.