Check out my real estate blogs at Thinking about buying or selling a home, condo, or townhouse in Victoria? Click here to sign up for Victoria area listings e-mailed to you daily? Even in a more balanced market some homes sell very quickly. When you look at these quick sales, there is usually something about the home or the location or the price that makes it more appealing to a buyer. Sign up above and be the first to find the best! NEWS FLASH The average price of single family homes in Greater Victoria last month was $620.883, down from $644,678 in January; The six-month average was $620,174. The overall average price for condominiums was $304,163 last month, down from $313,337 in January. The average for the last six months was $320,376. The median price for condominiums in February declined to $285,000. The average price of all townhomes sold last month was $460,900 up from $453,013 in January. The median price rose to $430,000. The six month average was $453,440.
Thinking about moving to Victoria? Recent stats suggest that Canadians are retiring earlier than their parents... Of the up to 700,000 people who retire every year, including the self-employed, about 80 per cent choose to stop working before the age of 65. While most Canadians would have retired at 65 a decade ago, the number is closer to 62 today... (Source Toronto Star) As baby boomers continue to retire in ever increasing numbers, prices will fluctuate month to month but the long term trend is a continued increase in Victoria over the long term. Call me toll free at 1-877-478-9600 to have Victoria area listings e-mailed to you daily. I offer you leading edge technologies for your upcoming real estate transaction, while at the same time provide you with First Class Service!
Wondering how Victoria really stacks up compared to other Canadian cities? MoneySense Magazine ranks us as number 1 in the country!
| | | | | | | | | 1 | | BC | 70 | 29 | 6 | 19 | 5 | 21 | 2 | | ON | 95 | 46 | 44 | 22 | 7 | 84 | 3 | | ON | 74 | 71 | 27 | 23 | 8 | 96 | 4 | | ON | 34 | 25 | 23 | 21 | 8 | 88 | 5 | | BC | 113 | 138 | 2 | 13 | 6 | 20 | 6 | | NB | 123 | 132 | 99 | 25 | 4 | 49 | 7 | | NB | 75 | 124 | 99 | 25 | 4 | 49 | 8 | | MB | 28 | 31 | 125 | 18 | 5 | 17 | 9 | | ON | 87 | 16 | 87 | 27 | 6 | 100 | 10 | | MB | 14 | 58 | 143 | 22 | 5 | 47 | 11 | | ON | 113 | 79 | 47 | 24 | 11 | 134 | 12 | | AB | 45 | 57 | 147 | 19 | 6 | 30 | 13 | | QC | 141 | 133 | 94 | 21 | 8 | 88 | 14 | | NS | 115 | 145 | 65 | 17 | 4 | 5 | 15 | | ON | 109 | 56 | 78 | 26 | 8 | 132 | 16 | | ON | 128 | 87 | 103 | 25 | 4 | 49 | 17 | | ON | 66 | 68 | 52 | 24 | 11 | 134 | 18 | | AB | 31 | 55 | 101 | 19 | 7 | 54 | 19 | | ON | 29 | 36 | 25 | 28 | 8 | 137 | 20 | | ON | 100 | 41 | 73 | 25 | 8 | 120 |
Best Places to Live: Where does your city rank?
Phil Froats and Rob Gerlsbeck
MoneySense
http://list.canadianbusiness.com/rankings/bestplacestolive/2009/article.aspx?id=20090501_20007_20007&page=1 Want to know what makes a great place to live? Ask Susan Bird. Over the past 20 years she and her husband Darren have hopscotched across Canada, going wherever Darren's engineering career has taken them. Along the way, they've raised two kids and seen first-hand what's right — or wrong — about life in several towns and cities. Start with Burtts Corner, a small town outside of Fredericton. Susan grew up there. It was a great place to be a kid. Safe, quiet. No need to lock your doors at night. In 1989, when she was 22, Susan married Darren, a local boy, and they moved down the road to Fredericton. They could have happily spent the rest of their lives there, but only six months after their wedding Darren landed a job building ships in Saint John, N.B. That's where the Birds' son, Josh, was born in 1991 and, two years later, their daughter, Rachael. Life was good until 1996 when work at the shipyard began to dry up. Darren went looking for another place to apply his engineering skills and found it on the other side of the country, at an engineering firm in Calgary. “We were sad to leave the Maritimes, because it's where we grew up,” says Susan. But Calgary turned out to be “awesome.” The schools were top-notch, it was easy to find a doctor and everyone “was so laid back and friendly.” Even the long winters were surprisingly livable thanks to the warm chinook winds that would periodically pour down from the mountains and over the city. Darren and Susan settled happily into the Calgary suburb of Airdrie. They might have stayed there for good — but then, four years ago, Darren's company offered him a job in Ottawa. The Birds have been living in the nation's capital ever since. Susan scoffs at the notion that places are all pretty much alike. While franchise stores and television shows may be much the same anywhere, the Birds have become experts at recognizing the sometimes big, sometimes subtle, differences that give cities their distinct personalities. Susan can tick off the high or low points of every place she's lived. Saint John offered sweeping ocean views, but its air was a foggy, polluted soup. Calgary boasted fresh air, but its house prices were ridiculous, even in the outlying subdivisions where yards the size of postage stamps contradicted the Birds' image of Alberta as the wide-open West. As for Ottawa, Susan loves its long, hot summers (in Calgary, she remembers, it once snowed in July). She is less thrilled with Ontario taxes, which are much higher than in Alberta. As Susan will tell you, a lot of factors go into making a city a great place to live. And that's precisely what our fourth annual ranking of Canada's Best Places to Live sets out to measure. We've painstakingly compiled vital stats on 154 communities from coast to coast. Our goal is to help you find the best places to put down roots, the best places to have a good time and the best places to retire. No matter how you define paradise, we've got the numbers that can help you find the city that will suit you best. The listWe believe this year's version of Canada's Best Places to Live is our most comprehensive research project yet. While we've kept all the indicators of community quality used in previous editions, we've added more data on crime rates and medical services. We've also turned our attention to measuring the impact of culture and recreation. Finally we've compared how much more in sales and income tax you'll pay from one province to the next. (Hint: the further west you go, the more you save.) Our approach to ranking communities is unique in two ways. First, we don't rely on subjective judgments. Most rankings of best places rely upon touristy impressions of historic downtowns and spectacular beaches. We think that approach is flawed because a visitor's impressions can be skewed by personal preference or by a single experience, good or bad. In contrast, our grading system looks only at features that have broad appeal and that can be reliably measured with hard numbers. Second, we focus on the factors most likely to affect your long-term happiness. While we've got nothing against charming downtowns and nice beaches, we prefer to concentrate on more practical matters: your chances of landing a good job, affording a nice home, and getting high-quality medical care. Much of what we measure is invisible to the tourist's eye — which is why some of our top communities might come as a surprise to you. To arrive at our rankings, we rate each community on 24 indicators. We pride ourselves on being tough markers. No city comes close to earning full points and even our very top cities don't get much beyond 70 points out of a maximum of 105. Here's how we dole out our marks: Chance of flurriesWe start by looking at daily temperatures. Places that enjoy fewer days below zero earn more points than ones that resemble a meat freezer most of the year. Next we look at rain and snow. We assume that most people prefer not to get drenched every day, but most of us also don't want to live in permanent drought. So we award top points to places that receive a moderate 700 mL of rain and snow every year. We take away points from places that fall substantially above or below that mark. Whitehorse, with a sparse 267 mL of precipitation a year, loses points for being Canada's driest city; Prince Rupert, B.C., with 2,594 mL of the wet stuff each year, suffers an equal hit for being Canada's soggiest place. The ideal city — at least when it comes to precipitation — is Barrie, Ont., which gets bang on 700 mL a year. We also award points for air quality. Cities with the lowest ozone levels and lowest particulate matter earn top marks in that category. A home of your ownTo reflect this practical reality, we award each city up to 15 points for housing affordability. As you might expect, communities with the cheapest home prices earn points as low-cost delights. But the very cheapest places are sometimes cheap for a reason — such as high unemployment and low wages. So we balance off our affordability calculations by awarding extra points based on how many years of an average local salary it takes to own a home. This helps to ensure that we're measuring each city's real estate in terms of what local people can actually afford. Big moneyTo measure prosperity, we start by looking at average salaries — the higher, the better. But since living costs vary so much across the country we place an equal weight on discretionary income. This figure calculates how much money people have left after they pay their taxes, mortgages, grocery bills and transportation expenses. The differences between communities on this scale can be huge. A typical household in Calgary has $35,478 left over after paying for the necessities of life, while households in Thetford Mines, Que., scrape by on just over $11,000 a year in discretionary income. To give us a broad picture of a community's economic health, we look at its unemployment level. (It's hard to jump-start your career in a city where the jobless rate is in the double-digits.) We also take into account the number of new cars on the road. (Because when people splurge on a brand new car, it's a sign they're not only well off, but upbeat about the future.) This year we also began to factor in tax rates. As Susan Bird discovered after she moved to Ottawa from Calgary, provincial income and sales taxes vary substantially from one province to the next. The low-tax winners? Alberta (which charges no provincial sales tax), British Columbia (which has some of the lowest provincial income tax rates in the country) and the Northwest Territories (which has the lowest income tax rates of all). Cities in each of these areas earn more points than cities in more highly taxed jurisdictions, such as Quebec and the Maritimes. Ah, the good lifeFirst up: health care. We give top marks to places with lots of doctors and other health-care professionals per capita. We also award a community a point for having at least one hospital. Next we look at population growth, since there's no more sincere endorsement of a community than a steady influx of new residents. We give top marks to cities that are growing a couple of percentage points faster than the national average, but not so fast that they threaten to overwhelm their resources. We take a close look at each community's statistics for homicides, violent crime, and property crime. Cities where your new Lexus is most likely to get stolen lose points. Communities where you can leave your door unlocked earn extra points. Finally, we examine local amenities. Cities earn marks for having a transit system and a college or university campus with more than a thousand students. We also award points to cities where a high percentage of people walk or bike to work, since a large number of pedestrians and bicyclists suggest a community that's clean, compact and safe. A little buzz, pleaseWe took your comments to heart. But rather than try and guess at whether a hockey team in Toronto should receive more points than a ballet company in Winnipeg or a ski hill in British Columbia or a theatre festival in P.E.I., we asked ourselves how we could objectively measure how much “buzz” each community possesses. Our solution is to look at the percentage of residents in each community who are employed in art, culture, recreation and sports. Communities can earn up to five bonus points for having an especially large proportion of jobs in those categories. Our reasoning is that any attraction — whether it be a ski hill or a music theatre or a pro sports team — should have jobs attached to it, and counting up those jobs should provide an excellent indicator of the amount of interest the attraction generates. The overall number of cultural and sports-related jobs in a community should provide a telling gauge of that place's potential for good times, whether those good times consist of rocketing down a ski slope or taking in live music. So, which city is the best?There you have it. We ranked 154 communities with populations greater than 10,000. We lumped small suburbs in with nearby cities, but if a suburb had a population greater than 100,000, we ranked it separately. That means you'll find Surrey and Burnaby listed separately from Vancouver, while Mississauga and Richmond Hill are broken out from Toronto. Which city is best? For the past two years, Ottawa has topped our rankings, but this year the nation's capital was edged out by a new champion: Victoria. The West Coast city earned a top score of 73 points on our grading scale. It boasts a nearly embarrassing number of positives. Start with weather: the thermometer drops below zero in Victoria just 53 days a year, making the climate idyllic for gardeners and skateboarders alike. On top of that, the city's air is clean and fresh and its low unemployment rate rivals that of Alberta's oilsands regions. There are plenty of doctors, it's easy to get to wherever you're going by foot or bus, and tax rates are low. Victoria's only major downside? High home prices. You'll pay more than $440,000 to buy an average home in British Columbia's capital. Sybil Harrison, the chief librarian at a local college, thinks the high cost of living in Victoria is justified. She and her husband Larry, who works for a college in New Westminster, have lived in Vancouver, Seattle, Denver and Abu Dhabi. They moved to Victoria from Ontario a year ago. “Living here just feels easier than most places,” Sybil says. “When you think of what a city should be, Victoria is it.” Sybil loves the tree-lined streets and 19th-century homes. She also enjoys the mild weather, which allows her to walk to work most days, even though her office is two and a half kilometres from home. Ottawa can't boast the same weather as Victoria, but while our capital city has lost its top spot in this year's ranking, it's still no slouch. It earned 72 points on our scale, just one less than Victoria. Its secret is consistency. Ottawa isn't stellar in any single category we measured, but it ranked a bit above average in nearly everything. Local incomes are high, houses are affordable, an excellent transit system serves the city, and should you head out to sample the city's many art galleries and museums, you face little chance of getting mugged. Kingston, Ont., took the bronze medal in our rankings with 71 points. Tourists enjoy this historic city's waterfront and limestone architecture. Residents enjoy cheap homes (average price: $228,000), a large number of doctors, two universities, and easy strolls to many workplaces. You can see all of our top-rated communities by turning to The Top 10 places to live on page 32. The good news? There are excellent communities to live in no matter which part of the country you prefer. Two of our top 10 picks are in New Brunswick, two are in Manitoba and two are in B.C. Four are located in Ontario, but one of those, Ottawa, straddles the Gatineau region of Quebec. Our top cities tend to share two characteristics: government and students. Four of our top 10 cities are provincial or federal capitals. All the top 10 — except for Burlington — boast both a university and a college within city limits. This mix of students, professors and civil servants is hard to beat when it comes to providing a city with a healthy heart. Unlike factory workers, civil servants and professors rarely get laid off. And unlike duller communities, a city with lots of students is likely to boast an active cultural life. But that doesn't mean that other cities can't move into the top ranks. One benefit of our by-the-numbers approach is that a modest shift in any of a city's key stats can send it zooming up or down the charts. Take Dawson Creek, B.C. Last year we ranked it 114th. This year it vaulted to 34th, thanks mainly to falling unemployment. Mayors, take note: if you want to boost your community's ranking, we're happy to recognize the results of your efforts. (And just to make sure that we're not accused of favoring the hometown team, let us mention that Toronto, where MoneySense's office is located, skidded 28 places this year to finish in 79th spot.) You can see rankings and detailed data on all 154 communities by going to www.moneysense.ca. We hope you'll refer to our listings whether you're looking to move, invest or retire. “You think all places are the same and it doesn't matter where you live,” says Susan Bird. “But that's not really true.” Often, it's the little things, she says. People in Ottawa are more reserved than Calgarians, so it took her far longer to make friends. And Ottawa's hospitals seem old and weathered compared to Calgary's shiny-new facilities. On the other hand, Susan found it maddening that no matter how much it snowed in Calgary, the highways never seemed to get completely plowed. For now, the Birds are happy to call Ottawa home. Next year their son, Josh, is heading to university. With both Carleton University and the University of Ottawa nearby, he'll save plenty by living at home. After all, when you're searching for paradise, it pays to be practical. |