VANCOUVER: On a recent Wednesday evening at the Gotham Steakhouse in the city center here, about 100 people gathered around an open bar for a party given by Ian Watt, a Century 21 broker, who had invited clients to thank them for buying property in the city.
One of the guests was Annu Gill. With her fiancé, Rick Gill, who coincidentally has the same last name, she had bought a 1,200-square-foot, or 110-square-meter, condominium at the Sheraton Wall Center, a 42-story hotel with 74 units in the center of Vancouver. The condo cost 1 million Canadian dollars, or $1 million.
"When I try to explain to friends in the States how much it costs here, they don't believe me," Annu Gill, 29, who is a real estate broker, said of the city's high prices. "They say, 'You're lying.' "
But 830 dollars a square foot - which is how much the couple paid for the condo - is not unusual these days.
The center of Vancouver is the most expensive housing market in Canada, according to a survey of 21 cities worldwide released last April by Century 21. The average sales price for a condo in Vancouver has been about 408,500 dollars this year, up 14.6 percent from last year, according to Royal Le Page Real Estate Services. The average sales price in Toronto, Canada's largest city, was about 235,300 dollars, up 15.7 percent from last year, and in Montreal, 196,400 dollars, up 4.6 percent.
The number of homes in Vancouver selling for almost 2 million dollars also rose this year, by 48 percent, according to Re/Max Associates. The higher prices reflect years of price gains of 15 to 20 percent, according to Helmut Pastrick, the chief economist for the Credit Union Central of British Columbia.
Not everybody is enthusiastic about Vancouver's growth. To make room for some projects, hundreds of single-room-occupancy hotel rooms for low-income residents have been lost, said David Eby, a lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society, a legal advocacy group. High prices are pushing out middle-income renters and buyers, he added.
Gordon Price, the director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, said the city had erred in abandoning its commitment to maintaining a 33 percent low-income housing mix in the Southeast False Creek site. The development is being built initially to house athletes during the Olympics. Later, it is to be converted into condominiums and town houses selling for 584,000 dollars to 5.8 million dollars.
The city reverted to a 20 percent low-income housing mix because of concerns about cost, said Jennifer Young, a city spokeswoman, explaining that there had been a drop in government financing for low-income housing.
Darek Cole, for one, said he felt lucky to afford a home in the city. "Vancouver is a difficult place to get into, compared to other cities," said Cole, 26, who works for a marketing company. He paid almost 263,000 dollars for a 600-square-foot condo in the city's Downtown Eastside neighborhood.
"I knew it would be a good investment," he said.
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