With Stephen Harper promising 700,000 new Canadian home owners by 2020 if the Conservatives win, the pressure is on the other leading parties in the upcoming federal election to show how they will help the average Canadian with housing and renovations. Here’s a round-up of the election promises.

Conservative

The incumbent Conservative party has been the most vocal on the subject of home ownership, and on September 29, Harper announced that his party is setting a target of creating 700,000 new homeowners by 2020.

Promises to give Canadians more tools to buy and improve homes are enshrined in the Conservative platform, and leader Stephen Harper has bragged about Canada’s high home ownership rate, calling it a sign of a strong economy, despite

The B.C. Real Estate Association will be making a fresh appeal next Tuesday for the provincial government to lower the Property Transfer Tax.

The association, representing the province’s 18,500 realtors, will make its case during pre-budget consultations by a government committee.

This will be the fifth consecutive time the BCREA is making such a plea. And it appears this may be the year the advice is heeded.

The push for a lower PTT comes amid rising frustration in Vancouver over prohibitive house prices and mounting evidence of tax avoidance and evasion by foreign property buyers.

Locals have every reason to be apoplectic at the high taxes they are asked to pay in relation to home ownership when it is so obvious that a sizable and

Real estate agents say anecdotal resurgence of American buyers

American buyers enticed by the low Canadian dollar are scooping up B.C. properties, according to several luxury market real estate agents. 

Jonathan Cooper, vice-president of operations for the Macdonald   Realty Group, says he has anecdotally seen a resurgence of Americans interested in Vancouver homes. 

"There was activity from all nationalities around the Olympics, but especially because of our proximity to Washington state, a lot of Americans were here at that time... talked to agents, went to open houses," he says. 

"They're high net-worth families who have heard about Vancouver, love how beautiful it is ... and yeah, it's a second home for vacation purposes."

And now

The Conservative Party of Canada has made two more pre-election pledges aimed at home buyers, one of them promising that if elected, the federal government would raise the maximum permitted amount taken from an RRSP to put as a down payment on a first home.

Currently the Home Buyer’s Plan allows first-time buyers to take up to $25,000 out of their RRSP to put down on the purchase or construction of their first house, as long as it is repaid. This maximum would be increased to $35,000 under a newly elected Conservative government.

“For many Canadians, owning a home is their most important investment and the achievement of a key life goal,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “We want to help more Canadian families purchase their first dream home.

Based on value, momentum, economic strength and rental income potential...

Anyone who’s been to or lived in Edmonton will tell you: the big West Ed Mall isn’t the city’s main attraction. “There’s so much more to Edmonton,” explains Mark Slobodan, realtor with RE/MAX Excellence. Considered the blue collar city of Alberta’s oil patch, much of the wealth comes from tradespeople who work in the oil sands. But locals also know that the city has the distinction of being Alberta’s cultural, governmental and educational centre. The University of Alberta (UofA) makes its home here, and the city’s famous nickname—“Canada’s Festival City”—is due, in part, to the vast number of festivals that are part of the city’s thriving arts scene, most of which is centred

Ever wondered where’s the best place to live in Canada? MoneySense knows.

After months of sifting through reports from Environics Analytics, Statistics Canada and other data providers, MoneySense released their annual report on the best places to live in Canada in 2015.

“In a country that measures 6,521km across, with massively different economic regions and seven distinct climate zones, you can imagine it’s a ton to digest,” writes Mark Brown, the Reports and Rankings Editor at MoneySense. “We carefully weigh dozens of factors to geta  big picture of the overall health of 209 communities across the county.”

Considering 34 different factors, MoneySense believes that there’s a strong correlation between the economics of a city and the type of life

A friend of mine sold her Toronto house because prices were so high. She didn't want to get caught in the downdraft. 

If you've been listening to all the warnings from foreign banks about a Canadian house price crash, that sounds smart. But before you congratulate my chum on her forethought, you should know she made that decision several years ago.

Of course, since then Toronto house prices have only continued their dramatic rise. Although Toronto and Vancouver lead the way with soaring real estate, prices in many other Canadian cities continue to rise. 

In the face of a series of recent reports of houses selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars over their asking prices, I thought it a good time to look at why all the gloom-mongers have been

Kamloops housing market 'surged' during first part of 2015

KAMLOOPS – With more houses being built and home-buyers spending more the Kamloops housing market is off to a very good start in 2015.

According to Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation single-unit housing starts in Kamloops 'surged' in the first three months of 2015. The report from the corporation shows every category of housing start grew during the first quarter, with the exception of rental apartments. The first quarter of 2015 saw just one rental unit built, compared to 88 in 2014. 

The corporation notes there is a provincial trend towards multi-family dwellings and the trend is seen in Kamloops as well, where the number of starts on semi-detached homes tripled. Single-family

Land transfer tax has become a powerful source of income for the province of British Columbia. In 2013/14 property transfer tax is expected to generate approximately $740 million.

Critics of the tax argue that increasing real estate values have distorted the original purpose of the Property Transfer Tax Act. However, making adjustments to the land transfer tax system and maintaining critically important tax dollars, at the same time, has presented a long-standing conundrum for legislators.

The Chamber applauds the recent 2014 provincial budget initiative to raise the threshold of properties that qualify for the grant thus reducing the cost of Property Transfer Tax (PTT) for first time home buyers (FTHB) in British Columbia. This is an important

The B.C. housing market is on fire — and not just in Vancouver

It’s not only the country’s most expensive market that is on fire in British Columbia, more homes traded hands throughout the province in March than in eight years.

The British Columbia Real Estate Association said Thursday that 9,101 homes were sold through the Multiple Listing Service last month, a 37.6 per cent increase in sales from a year ago. The total dollar volume was $5.8 billion, a 57.1% increase from a year ago while average prices climbed 14.1 per cent during the period to $641,799.

The Vancouver story has been well documented and the provincial statistics bear out the strength of that market. Greater Vancouver, where the average price of a home sold in March reached