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September 23, 2021

Most expensive Canadian condo sold for $40 million in Vancouver

It is not surprising that the most expensive condo sale in Canada would happen in Vancouver. A Middle Eastern royal paid a whopping $40 million for a penthouse suite and the unit underneath in the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel.

It's a record amount with the deluxe penthouse suite selling for $25 million and the other unit putting the total sale over the top, according to the Vancouver Sun. The condo sits in Coal Harbour, an area known for its pricey properties.

For the past few years, Vancouver's real estate market has attracted foreign investment from wealthy Chinese and Hong Kong buyers, a Vancouver realtor told Bloomberg.

It also seems like this trend may continue with a busy fall season for luxury home sales, according to a recent study by Sotheby International Realty Canada. Canada's luxury homes are attracting buyers from China, Russia, the Middle East, India and the United States. These homes are typically bought by parents buying condos for their children when they send their children to Canada to study, a Toronto real estate agent told the Huffington Post.

These sales help our real estate market since we'd prefer  slowdown of home sales rather than all buyers running for the hills, but unfortunately, these types of sales contribute to higher real estate prices, which doesn't bode well for first-time buyers. It's a bit of a catch-22 where Canadians hold their breath to see whether our housing market will face a soft landing or suffer a hard crash with or overvalued housing market. It doesn't help matters that Canada is deemed to have one of the most overvalued housing markets in the world, according to the OECD.

The federal government stepped in last year by tightening mortgage rules and lowering the mortgage timeframe to 25 from 30, which led to a slowdown. but since then there's been a pickup in sales. With our high household debt, Canadians can only hope that we can handle interest rate hikes when they come.

Do you think the housing market will crash or have a soft landing?

Josephine Lim, MSN Money

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Gordon PowersGordon Powers

A long-time fund company executive, Gordon Powers now heads up the Affinity Group, a financial services consulting firm. Gordon was a personal finance columnist for the Globe & Mail for many years, has taught retirement planning...