$1 million-plus homes selling like crazy across Canada: report

A new report from Sotheby's International Realty Canada shows just how in-demand the country's largest, most expensive homes are.

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Indeed, pending housing market slump be damned, 2012 was a banner year for homes worth $1 million or more in Canada

By the measure of Sotheby's, sales of million-dollar homes in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver -- the four cities surveyed in the report -- were 20 per cent higher in 2012 than they were a year earlier.

"As we enter 2013, the market for homes over $1 million is expected to gain momentum and to generate increasing demand from both local and international buyers," the report reads.

Toronto (listings up 25 per cent; sales up 13 per cent) and Calgary (listings up nearly 67 per cent; sales up 20 per cent) led the charge for the country's primo real estate market last year.

Certainly, you might call foul to the Sotheby's report, which might neglect to factor that even modestly large homes in the four major cities surveyed could be inflated in price since, you know, they're in four of Canada's largest cities.

But perhaps that's corrected a bit by the showing of Vancouver, the most whacked-out real estate market Canada knows.

According to Sotheby's, the sale price of million-dollar homes actually slowed as 2012 went along. In the first half of the year, 22 per cent of Vancouver homes listed at more than $1 million sold for more than the asking price. By the second half of the year, that number fell to five per cent.

By Jason Buckland, MSN Money