Number of houses sold over 3 mln Canadian dollars up 31 pct in 2014

A record number of homes were sold for more than 3 million CAD (2.5 million U.S. dollars) in Vancouver and its surrounding cities in 2014, up 31 percent from 2013, Vancouver's major real estate company Macdonald Realty said on Tuesday.

Dan Scarrow, vice president of corporate strategy of Macdonald Realty, said that the company had been tracking the number of properties over 3 million CAD listed on the Multiple Listing Service for 15 years and found a lot had been changed over the years.

"We picked the 3 million dollars barrier in 2000 because back then there were only ten homes in Greater Vancouver that sold for over 3 million dollars," he said. But in 2014, that number had jumped to 842 -- an increase of 31 percent from the year before, he said.

The highest concentration of properties selling for more than 3 million Canadian dollars was in West Vancouver and parts of Vancouver's West Side such as Point Grey, said Scarrow.

The increase of expensive house sale shows that Vancouver has become a city with one of the most unaffordable housing market in the world.

According to a newly released annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey, Vancouver was ranked the second most unaffordable city in the world, only after Hong Kong.

Some local residents told Xinhua that they were worried about the surging housing prices in Vancouver because the expensive houses began to ruin the chances of young Canadians trying to move into the real estate market of Vancouver and even started to force talented people out of Vancouver and into other cities with more affordable houses. Endite