Garth Turner posted a link to truecondos.com/wp from his very popular blog: Greater Fool. Garth is probably Canada’s best known ‘Bear’ when it comes to real estate and has been blogging and writing books about the impending doom of the Canadian real estate market for a couple years now. Garth calls me a ‘Hypester’ which is fairly flattering compared to what he calls most Realtors.

For those of you with Bear-like tendencies or who simply would like a different perspective on real estate in Canada, check out Garth’s blog. He has a strong and loyal following as you can see from the graphic above and the amount of traffic generated from Garth’s link to this site.

BuzzBuzzHome.com has just launched in beta. What is BBH? In their own words:

BuzzBuzzHome’s mission is to give people the power to search, research and connect to directly new home developments.

Many of you have perhaps been following the BuzzBuzzHome blog, or following BuzzBuzzHome on Twitter for the past few months and like me, have been wondering what exactly they were planning. Now that they have launched their website it’s clear that they are aiming to build a comprehensive online database for buyers to be able to research new condo developments as well as sign up for updates on their favourite developments. It’s all based on Google maps and users can search and compare the various condo developments quickly and easily with the click of a mouse.

It’s also aimed at developers themselves so that they can reach their potential customers and make their information about their developments available in a user-friendly way. Developers are encouraged to ‘sponsor’ their listings so that they stand out from the rest and so they can add more premium content.

It is still in beta, so the data is somewhat limited at the moment, but it looks promising.  Here’s hoping developers will be willing to share their data with the site to make it a truly useful tool for condo buyers.

I came across an interesting post over at New Condos Online about how American developers should start aggressively pursuing Canadian buyers for their product due to the relatively strong Canadian economy and the (until very recently) high Canadian dollar.

This is very timely advice for American developers to consider. Most US Real Estate Markets are still following a downward slide. Prices are still falling, inventory is still massive with little signs of it changing in the near term. Canadian investors are beginning to wonder it things have peaked here in Canada and are starting to look elsewhere for better value and better long-term prospects for price appreciation.

While foreign developers are starting to consider Canadian buyers, foreign investors are still feeling quite bullish on the long-term prospects of condos in markets like Toronto. More and more international investors are looking at purchasing condos in Toronto as investment vehicles, or as temporary residences. Look at recent developments like Ice Condos or Aura. Anecdotal evidence suggests a substantial proportion of buyers in these landmark projects are from outside of Canada. Canada is considered a safe, secure, low-risk place to invest to many outside of our borders.

My own client list is increasingly becoming something of a United Nations. Just in the last year alone I have had new clients originating from the U.K., Dubai, Taiwan, Korea, India, China, and Bangladesh to name a few.

If you are interested in knowing more about investing in Canada and Toronto in particular, please contact me.