Luxury Vancouver home sales surge to new level

The record sale price of one of Vancouver's most expensive mansions to a Chinese businessman is stirring up interest on both shores of the Pacific in recent days.

Last December, a Chinese businessman and former duck farmer, Chen Mailin, reached a deal to buy a 8,300-square-meter mansion on Vancouver's West Side for 51.8 million Canadian dollars (41.4 million U.S. dollars), according to the Vancouver Sun newspaper report.

The massive deal hit the news last week in Canada and is believed to be one of Vancouver's largest home sale deals.

It comes as no surprise to local realtors, who say that a combination of China's wealth boom and Vancouver's international reputation for livability means that other similar deals could be on the way.

David Choi, founder of Royal Pacific Realty, a big real estate company, told Xinhua that it meant a lot to Vancouver.

"Vancouver is now one of the most popular places for expensive home residences. Right up there in the world where the Chinese mainlanders prefer cities like London, New York, Sydney and Vancouver."

He said a 5-million-dollar (4 million U.S. dollars) house in Vancouver is becoming quite common now. According to his figures, roughly 370 homes in Vancouver were valued at 5-million Canadian dollars in 2010, and the number surged to roughly 1,200 houses this year.

Choi said Vancouver still has limited housing stock and even marginal growth in China would continue to stoke what is already a very hot local housing market.

"China certainly generates a lot more than the entire pool, the entire stock of this number, that are able to buy this kind of home. The matter is will they choose London or New York or Los Angeles or Vancouver?" he added.

Malcolm Hasman is one of Vancouver's leading luxury home realtors. He agreed that the top homes here have been getting dramatically more expensive.

"What we're starting to see is a lot of sales in that four, five million and up bracket. The most active market being between four and eight million, but there's a significant increase in sales in that eight, up to, as you've seen recently 50 million dollars plus," Hasman told Xinhua in an interview.

He also noted that Vancouver's reputation for good schools, safe neighborhoods and natural beauty gives overseas buyers confidence in the market.

People are coming from all over the world to Vancouver. But predominantly, the last three or four years saw a dramatic rise of people coming from the Chinese mainland, he said.

"That is a very strong market at the moment and I see it continuing for some years to come," Hasman added. Endite