Canadians flocking to buy homes in Southeast Valley

Virtually every week during the past two years, a Valley home was sold for at least $1 million to a Canadian buyer.

The majority of the homes are in Scottsdale, but Mesa, Gilbert and Queen Creek are also on the luxury list, with individual sales between $1.3 million and nearly $3.8 million.

The transactions, totaling nearly $300 million, are an indication that Canada's preference for Arizona as the No. 1 place to invest is growing, said Glenn Williamson, founder and CEO of the Canada Arizona Business Council, a non-profit that promotes bilateral trade.

The Canadian purchases represent at least 6 percent of the 1,742 homes sold in Maricopa County for $1 million, or more, since Jan. 1, 2009, according to Ben Toma, broker for Toma Partners, a Phoenix real-estate firm that specializes in sales of luxury homes.

Toma and other agents called the transactions a significant chunk of the high-end housing market and said there are probably more such sales to Canadians that have not yet been identified in surveys.

A recent report by Valley real-estate analyst R.L. Brown identified nearly 500 Valley home sales to Canadians in 2010. The report said the homes were bought from more than builders.

Many of the sales in Mesa - 96 of them in communities developed by builder Jeff Blandford - indicated that Canadians were influencing other Canadians to buy homes in the same communities. Other sales were in Gilbert, Chandler and Queen Creek.

"What perhaps is the most surprising is the number of homebuilders that failed to capture substantive numbers of Canadian new homebuyers over the data period, begging the question of what marketing strategies or product positioning was used by the builders with the highest capture of these buyers," Brown said in his report.

Williamson said the Business Council obtained records of the sales from the Canadian government to compile a more complete Arizona/Canada trade and investment picture.

Canada is Arizona's largest foreign investor, a statistic reflected by the state's $2.3 billion bilateral trade with Canada, excluding tourism, Williamson said.

The Business Council is bringing industrial leaders from Canada and Arizona together to try to increase bilateral trade between Canada and Arizona to $5 billion U.S. by 2012.

Williamson said Canadians have been purchasing homes in the Valley for years, but the recent trend seems to be increasing.

The momentum, he said, has been influenced by many factors, including the prices of homes and the current pro-Canadian, currency exchange rate that turns their $20 into 21 U.S. dollars.

"First it was people coming down here on their own, now dozens of Arizona residential and commercial brokers are making trips all across Canada and promoting the concept of buying homes and commercial buildings as well as land in Arizona," he said.

Williamson said the Business Council has also noticed that more and more eastern Canadians, a demographic that traditionally purchased winter homes in Florida, are now choosing the Valley.

"We're seeing this trend for the first time," he said. "Taxation was one reason. If you're a second-home purchaser in Florida, odds are you pay more taxes. Hurricane insurance also is expensive."

Fulton Homes CEO Doug Fulton said US Airways flights to and from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport to the city of Toronto and the province of Quebec, are also an indication of the growing eastern Canadian interest in the Valley.

Fulton, Beazer Homes, Shea Homes and Robson Resort Communities are marketing aggressively to reach more Canadian buyers in Canada and Arizona, and US Airways has three salespeople dedicated to the Canadian market, Williamson said.

"The Canadians are looking at Arizona as if our homes were half price," said Terence Murnin, a spokesman for Fulton Homes. "It's been great, and it is such a neat relationship with our neighbors to the north."

Fulton said it is no surprise that Canadians are big players in the high-end home market and that they seem to be responding to promotions tailored to their tastes.

"We have an aquatics center in one of our developments because when they come in winter they want to go swimming," he said. "Another thing we noticed is that they love west-facing backyards, which is perceived as a negative here. They have brought a different flavor to the market."

by Art Thomason The Arizona Republic Apr. 23, 2011 12:00 AM




Canadians flocking to buy homes in Southeast Valley