Homebuyers like businessman Brian Campbell first saw eight-bedroom homes listed in Mont-Tremblant, but quickly dismissed the idea. He owned one rental property and he was not in the market for another. He changed his mind though after inspecting the numbers more closely.
The Canadian dollar, known as the loonie for the bird on its back, fell against the United States dollar in 2015, as well as, in the first part of this year. Although it had regained value in recent months, the loonie was still about 24 percent below its 2013 levels, when the currencies' values were closer to each other.
Homebuyers saw bigger bargains in Canada's getaway home market. While Canada did not track data on buyer citizenship, observers in many resort communities had noticed an influx of American visitors over the past year. They claimed that more Americans were now returning to buy vacation homes, according to a feature from Realtor.com.
Christopher Vincent, a realtor with Sotheby's International Realty Canada stated that all of a sudden, their phones started ringing. The a small community located an hour from Calgary had experienced almost a decade without any significant interest from the american market.
Vincent said he brokered a sale with an American couple and was currently working with other potential buyers from the U.S. He expected those numbers to increase with tourism season. One of their clients was Cecilia Padilla a president of a Texas software company who had been searching for a second property in the mountains with her husband.
The homebuyer couple said that they began by inspecting locations such as Colorado, Montana and Idaho before looking at Canada's western province. The two had been there several years earlier and were surprised to see what they could purchase for their money. Their offer on a three-story Canmore townhouse for just one million Canadian dollars was accepted in March, according to a feature from The Wallstreet Journal.
