USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sales of new homes rose a higher-than-expected 3.4% in November, but they were down 15.3% from a year ago, a government report Wednesday showed.

Sales of new single-family homes hit a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.047 million units, reflecting solid sales increases in every region of the country except the South.

The increase offered hope that the steep slide in housing may be starting to bottom out as builders, using a wide array of incentives, begin to make a dent in the record level of unsold homes.

“The new-home sales report did beat the consensus forecast, and that, I think, provides further evidence to support the view that the worst of the housing downturn may have passed,” said Alex Beuzelin, senior market analyst for Ruesch International.

The 3.4% rebound in sales last month was the third increase in the past four months. It helped to lift the median price for a new home to $251,700, an increase of 3.2% from a year ago. The median price is the point where half the homes sold for more and half for less.

The housing industry has undergone a severe slowdown this year following a prolonged boom that had been fueled by the lowest mortgage rates in more than four decades.

This year’s slump followed five years in which sales of both new and existing homes had set records.

What some are calling a recession in housing has been a big factor in the economy’s overall slowdown, cutting 1.2 percentage points from growth in the July-September quarter, a period when the economy expanded at a lackluster pace of just 2%.

Many analysts believe housing is continuing to act as a drag on growth in the current quarter and will continue to depress activity through the early part of 2007.

The number of unsold homes by 1.4% in November to 545,000. It was the fourth straight decline in inventories after they had hit an all-time high of 573,000 units in July. Builders have been cutting prices and offering various incentives such as helping to cover closing costs in an effort to move finished homes and reduce high cancellation rates.

It would take 6.3 months to exhaust the current supply of homes at the November sales pace, down from 6.7 months in October and 7.2 months in July.

Sales last month increased in all parts of the country except the South, where they fell 9.3%. Sales were up 22.5% in the Northeast, a rebound from a huge 35.5% drop in October. Sales rose 22.4% in the Midwest and 19% in the West.

The new-home sales report is subject to strong revisions.

Growth or recession in 2007?

Barbara Hagenbaugh
USA Today

WASHINGTON — Housing has been a key engine of the U.S. economy in recent years. Now that the housing market has slowed, will the economy sputter to a stop?

That issue is sharply dividing economists, because no one is sure what impact the slowdown in housing will have on consumers, and thus the broad economy. The difference of opinion is leading to an enormous amount of uncertainty heading into the new year, with some economists predicting a recession and others forecasting continued growth.

Pessimists, such as Dean Baker, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, argue that spillover from the housing slowdown will be great in 2007 as consumers pull back spending.

Optimists, such as Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at LaSalle Bank in Chicago, say the contagion from the declining housing market will be minimal as consumers see their paychecks rise, helping to fuel spending.

The good news is that far more economists are in the optimist camp than the pessimist camp. Although a handful, such as Baker, are predicting the economy will slide into a housing-led recession next year, the majority anticipate the economy will continue to grow, albeit at the slowest pace in at least four years.

Such a softening in the economy means the unemployment rate will likely edge higher, and inflation will ease. The Federal Reserve may be forced to cut interest rates to buoy the economy, meaning borrowing costs could fall for items such as mortgages and credit card debt.

A significant slowdown means that for many Americans, the economy won’t feel that great, even if it’s not in recession, says David Rosenberg, North American economist at Merrill Lynch.

“It’s not the flu, it’s not pneumonia, but it’s still a little bit of a chill,” he says. Rosenberg expects the economy next year will grow at just about half the rate as in 2006.

Challenge for forecasters

There’s no doubt the housing market has dropped swiftly. Sales of previously owned homes are estimated to be down 8.6% this year from 2005, while sales of new homes are down 17.7%, according to the National Association of Realtors. Prices, meanwhile, have fallen after posting double-digit gains for years.

“No question, housing is in a recession,” Global Insight chief economist Nariman Behravesh says.

But most economists say that recession will not spread to the overall economy. In a poll of 21 prominent economists conducted by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the respondents expected economic growth of a median 2.5% in 2007, down from 3.3% in 2006.

But the difference of opinion is big. In the survey by SIFMA, the estimates for gross domestic product growth ranged from 1.6% to 2.9%.

“In transition periods, which we are in now, forecasting is very difficult,” says Lyle Gramley, senior economic adviser at Stanford Washington Research Group.

Housing’s impact on consumers is the issue dividing economists.

The housing market influences consumers in a number of ways, including acting as a job engine in construction, real estate and other industries. It also acts as a catalyst for consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of U.S. economic activity. Economists differ on the extent of the spending impact.

While the economists in the SIFMA survey expect consumers will continue to spend next year, New York University professor Nouriel Roubini, who is forecasting a recession in 2007, predicts the opposite: “While other parts of the economy are in recession, consumption is going to be the last shoe to drop.”

But housing won’t drag down the entire economy, says Ken Simonson, chief economist at the Associated General Contractors of America.

“People have exaggerated the importance of housing,” he says. “But now we have a lot more areas of strength in the economy.”

The issues:

•Less equity. Consumer spending in the past few years has been supported by homeowners using their homes as ATMs, either in the form of large profits when they sell, by refinancing at higher dollar values and cashing out the difference between the value of the old mortgage and the new one, or by taking out home equity loans reflecting their homes’ higher values.

With prices flat or falling and sales down, consumers will be taking less money out of their home equity.

Mortgage equity withdrawal fell in the third quarter to the lowest level in nearly three years, according to Federal Reserve estimates.

•Debt. U.S. households’ debts in relation to their income has steadily climbed in recent years, in part as consumers have taken on more mortgage debt, according to the Fed. That ratio will likely increase as homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages see their payments increase in coming years.

•Wealth effect. The decline in home prices is also likely having a psychological effect on consumers even if they don’t plan to sell their home or take out a line of credit. Just watching the homes around them sit for longer on the market and go for less money than they did a year ago may make homeowners feel less in a spending mood.

But the extent of this so-called wealth effect is up for debate.

If home prices were to fall 10%, returning to mid-2005 levels, “Households would feel worse off and probably would consume less,” John Makin, chief economist at Caxton Associates, wrote in a recent paper published by the American Enterprise Institute.

He estimates that such a decline would shrink GDP by 0.4%, not counting the direct effects of the drop-off in housing, such as in those who lose jobs in housing-related fields or the fewer furniture purchases as people stay put and have less of a need to redecorate. Still, he puts the odds of a housing-led recession next year at 50-50.

Baker, however, is far gloomier.

“I don’t really see how consumers can maintain their rate of spending,” he said in a recent panel discussion on the economy at the Center for American Progress.

“I think we might have a very severe recession.”

Optimists prevailing

But the majority of economists are more optimistic. Wachovia’s Mark Vitner notes the downturn in the housing market isn’t a nationwide phenomenon, instead affecting certain pockets of the economic geography. That means the impact of the housing downturn on consumer spending will be more limited.

And LaSalle’s Tannenbaum argues that consumers are finding other ways to keep their shopping habits going. A tight labor market means wages are rising. If inflation moderates along with the economy, as expected, that means consumers will have more money to spend, he argues.

“For most, this (decline in housing) is not representing a serious detriment to the extent that it is being replaced by good income growth,” Tannenbaum says.

“I know that housing is coming down,” says Tom Adams, CEO of language software firm Rosetta Stone, noting that his wife, Alexandra, is a real estate agent.

“I know there is downward pressure,” Adams says, “and some of the froth in the economy is going to get taken out. But I still think the potential for (business) is significant.”

That sentiment was echoed in a recent survey of CEOs conducted by the Business Roundtable. On average, the CEOs anticipated growth of 2.8% in 2007.

“Growth seems to be in pretty good shape, just a little bit of a slower range” than in 2006, says Harold McGraw, chairman of the Business Roundtable and CEO of McGraw-Hill.

John Derrick, research director at U.S. Global Investors in San Antonio, says the current slowdown in the economy is just a “normal part of the cycle” that is setting up the economy to continue to expand in coming years.

“We’re just due,” he says, adding that the worst of the slowdown will soon be over. “If we haven’t had the recession yet, we’re probably not going to have it.”

Economic strengths

There are a number of things working in the economy’s favor.

•Stocks. Stock prices will add to their gains from this year by rising in 2007, according to a survey of 40 economic forecasters conducted by the Philadelphia Fed Nov. 17-30. Such gains can help boost consumer spending, as investors see gains when they sell and feel wealthier as they see their portfolios expand.

“There’s a wealth effect throughout the economy, because most all of us have 401(k)s,” Jim Steiner, managing principal at wealth management firm Lowry Hill in Minneapolis. “Any small incremental amount leads us to be slightly more confident.”

•Exports. A decline in the value of the dollar, combined with steady growth in economies around the globe, is expected to boost U.S. exports. Wachovia economists predict net exports will support U.S. GDP for the first time in 12 years.

•Profits. Corporate profits rose more than 30% in the third quarter from a year ago, according to the Commerce Department. Strong corporate profits allow businesses to invest and hire, helping to strengthen the economy.

Companies and investors are showing a “degree of enthusiasm and optimism” that corresponds with continued profit growth, says Bob Davis, managing general partner at Highland Capital Partners, a venture capital firm, and former CEO of Terra Lycos.

“I’m optimistic for the next year,” he says.

•Interest rates. Although the Federal Reserve raised interest rates 17 times from June 2004 to June 2006, rates are still at a historically low level. Plus, a number of economists, including those at Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Global Insight, predict that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues will cut rates at least once in 2007, making borrowing, and spending, easier.

“It’s easy to borrow money at these interest rates. So there’s a lot of money available,” Sempra Energy CEO Don Felsinger says.

Such positives will keep the economy out of recession in 2007, despite the decline in the housing market, economists say.

“The evidence is already in on the housing market,” Edward Lazear, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said at a briefing for reporters last week. “We have suffered, actually, very large declines in the housing market, and yet it hasn’t transmitted to any other parts of the economy. We know that the economy is robust. We know that the economy is resilient. We know that it’s able to offset the declines in one sector.”

Even some of those who are predicting recession say it might not be that bad. Parsec Financial chief economist Jim Smith, for example, sees a mild downturn, marked by a swift upswing in the economy at the end of 2007. “It’s 2001 all over again, which is the mildest recession we ever had,” he says.

Sluggish pace predicted for first six months of the year

Eric Beauchesne
Sun

OTTAWA — Slowdowns in housing, government spending and exports have all acted as a drag on the economy, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce said Wednesday as it forecast that growth will be “bumpy” next year — sluggish in the first half before bouncing back in the second.

“Economic growth will be below trend in the first half of the year,” it said, forecasting an annualized 2.2 to 2.5 per cent expansion. “But over the second half of 2007, it will return to a rate that is slightly above the . . . potential growth rate at 2.8 per cent.”

Canada’s long-running economic expansion slowed to a less than two per cent annual pace in the third quarter and will have difficulty getting back up to two per cent in the final quarter, it said, noting that’s well below the 3.6 per cent pace of growth in the first quarter of this year.

Meanwhile, evidence of that slowdown continued to mount with news that slumping auto sales have handed Canadian wholesalers their first back-to-back drop in sales in two years.

Wholesale sales, which account for a bigger share of gross domestic product than the more widely watched retail sales, slipped 0.2 per cent in October to $41.6 billion, Statistics Canada reported.

“Most of the decline was caused by another significant drop in automotive sales, which have fallen continuously since hitting a peak in July,” it noted.

“While the overall trend for the wholesale sector remains positive, it has eased somewhat over the past few months, in line with the general softening of the Canadian economy,” it said, noting overall growth slowed to a 1.7 per cent annualized pace in the third quarter, its slowest pace in three years.

Further clouding the outlook for Canada’s economy was another report from Statistics Canada that said visits here from the U.S., Canada’s largest tourism market, have hit a new record low.

“American residents made fewer than 2.3 million trips to Canada in October, the lowest monthly level for overall travel from the U.S. since record-keeping started in 1972,” it noted. “Canada was also visited by fewer visitors from countries other than the U.S.”

Concerns about border-security measures and delays are blamed in part for what has been a steep drop in visits here by Americans this year, and what to a lesser extent have also been declines in visits to the U.S. by Canadians.

Meanwhile, the chamber warned the slowdown in the U.S. also weighs heavily on the outlook for the overall Canadian economy.

And there’s a risk that the U.S. slowdown, and in turn Canada’s, could be deeper than now expected, it added.

Goods exports to the U.S. have already hit a near two-year low and the trade surplus with the U.S. a three-year low, the business organization noted.

“With demand in the U.S. expected to remain subdued into the first half of 2007, the Canadian trade sector is not likely to rebound soon,” it said, warning that the export-oriented manufacturing sector, already struggling with a strong dollar, competition from low-cost offshore producers and high energy costs, will bear the brunt of the U.S. slowdown.

“However, as the U.S. economy rebounds in the second half of 2007, so will growth in Canada,” said the organization.

“Domestic demand is expected to continue to drive growth in 2007, however, it is expected to moderate from last year’s pace as residential construction slows and consumers become more cautious in their spending habits as the pace of job creation moderates,” it said. “Business investment in machinery and equipment and non-residential construction is expected to remain robust thanks to high levels of retained earnings and relatively low cost of capital.”

Unemployment will average 6.4 per cent next year, up only a notch from this year’s more than 30-year low of 6.3 per cent, while inflation will moderate and the Bank of Canada will cut interest rates by half a percentage point in the spring, said the report. The Canadian dollar, meanwhile, will trade in the 86- to 89-cent range.

Western Canada, particularly Alberta and British Columbia, will continue to top the provincial growth charts in 2006 as high prices for energy and other commodities have generated increased corporate profits, business investment, employment, consumer spending and housing activity, it said. In contrast, the sharp appreciation of the Canadian dollar over the last four years and rising energy costs will continue to weigh on manufacturing-intensive Ontario and Quebec.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Malcolm Parry
Sun

BUSINESS LUNCH: Michael de Cotiis often has the $19 curry in the Hastings-at-Thurlow Marriott Pinnacle hotel he developed. Today, he opts for the same-price halibut poached in olive oil. So does his 19-year sales-and-marketing agent, Grace Kwok, who would normally choose the $14 soup-and-sandwich offering, which today is lentil-and-spinach with bratwurst on a hoagy.

Through driving rain, they can barely see across Burrard Inlet to a de Cotiis development the city of North Vancouver approved recently. That’s the foot-of-Lonsdale Pier project, where Kwok will begin selling 600 residential units in March. Prices aren’t finalized, but the 400 units of the across-the-street Premier development Kwok sold two years ago for $450,000- $555,000 would likely fetch $200,000 more today.

The Pier site, moreover, is on the waterfront, When completed before 2010, the $200-million, four-building project will incorporate a national museum complex and a 100-room hotel with a huge-for-the-North Shore 5,000-square-foot ballroom and other convention-related amenities.

An operator hasn’t been named, but West Vancouver resident de Cotiis said Marriott “is very much in the top running.”

Meanwhile. de Cotiis quietly bought the 440-room Renaissance (across Hastings Street from the Pinnacle) for $30 million this summer. The deal committed him to a $20-million refurbishment of its public and guest rooms.

By July, de Cotiis should be starting the first two 15-floor buildings of a $150-million, 300-unit scheme on False Creek South, with two more to come. He recently completed a $200-million, 800-unit, two-tower project on Toronto’s Bay Street, and is beginning a 51-floor, 500-unit building nearby.

Kwok says she merely “consults” on de Cotiis’s Toronto and San Diego projects. Still, she, husband Stephen and 38 employees have sold all of his high-raise schemes, totalling 4,000 units, since 1987. Her debut was a seven-floor concrete building in the West End, where 44 units fetched $120,000 each.

A former CMHC director and Simon Fraser University governor, Kwok adapted Asia-style pre-selling here in 1984. That was during the cash famine of a market downturn that stripped many developers of the bank financing they’d relied on. By 1987, when de Cotiis signed on, an unprecedented two decades of optimism and appreciation were about to begin.

– – –

Bruce Langereis, the Delta Land Development president, is actually closing a hotel — a venerable one at that.

It’s the 79-year-old Georgia Hotel at Georgia and Howe streets, where Langereis, 47, and five-month bride Diana will front a $150-ticket wingding New Year’s Eve, then padlock the joint. When it re-opens in 2010, $300 million will have been spent, a 48-floor commercial-residential tower designed by Jim Hancock and Hilda Heyvaerts will stand alongside, and the hotel should have been so thoroughly renovated “it will be the one where royalty stays again,” Langereis said.

By royalty, the Britannia secondary graduate and former waterfront heavy-duty mechanic meant the entertainers who long stayed there. Big-business guests, too, such as members of the Singapore-based Hii family that edged locals Rob Macdonald and Peter Wall to pay $62.8 million for the Georgia recently.

The Hiis knew what they were getting, having sold the building to Caleb Chan in a barrage of 1980s ownership changes precipitated by Nelson Skalbania and often involving then Macaulay Nicolls Maitland whiz realtor Andrea Eng.

Langereis is an old MNM (now Colliers International) hand himself. After quitting his big-wrench activities to take the B.C. Institute of Technology’s marketing-management course, he joined the realty firm — aiding Eng, Avtar Bains and the like — and eventually sold the old Oakridge police-station site to Delta Group chair and Delta Overseas Investments Pte. Ltd. managing director Tony Hii Yik Nan, aka Tony Hii.

When cousin Yuguan Hii returned to Singapore while developing the Conservatory project on the Oakridge site, Langereis said he protested: “You can’t leave. You’ve got a $60-million project going on.”

He says that’s when Tony Hii , who has since succeeded father Yii Chiong Hii as chair, said: “Why don’t you join us?”

A former Canadian free-style ski champ and climber who routinely scrambles up the Squamish Chief’s vertical main face, Langereis jumped to Delta’s presidency in January 1997. He’s since become a private pilot and “may” do some aerobatic flying, although not in the float-equipped Cessna 185 he plans to acquire.

Delta has offices in former 24 Hours of Le Mans racing driver Mark Galvin’s building at 1199 West Hastings Street, and has developed the $100-million-range Carina, Calisto and Cielo projects nearby. Recently, it acquired 1180 West Hastings Street, where, with the Japan-based Okabe Group it will build a 220-room hotel to be occupied by Okabe-owned Coast Hotels. That would empty the chain’s Denman Street property, which Delta and Okabe hope to rezone for conversion to condominiums, with appropriate public-amenity benefits.

In the bluer-sky realm, Langereis said Delta owns the only freehold parcel — 215 hectares — in the Soo Valley east and north of Whistler, and hopes to develop a 2,500-home townsite there. Market housing completed before the 2010 Winter Olympics would be offered to games organizers’ use “for free,” he said.

Name? “Bruceville,” Langereis said. Laughing, he added: The first nations involved will tell me what it should be called. It’s their traditional territory.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Derrick Penner
Sun

More buyers are balking at Vancouver’s high real estate prices in a market where housing is at its least affordable level since the early 1990s, RBC Economics reports.

RBC Economics released its third-quarter housing affordability index Wednesday which showed Vancouver’s affordability rating decline for the fourth straight quarter.

The index shows that it would take 75 per cent of Vancouver’s pre-tax median household income of $54,320 to pay for the mortgage, taxes and utilities on a standard two-storey single-family home, compared with 73 per cent in the second quarter.

For a single-family bungalow, the index rating is 70 per cent, compared with 68 per cent in the second quarter, on townhouses the index rating is 51 per cent of median income compared with 50 per cent and on standard condominiums, it is 35 per cent compared with 34 per cent in the second quarter.

“It’s really splitting hairs to see the difference between [the early 1990s] and now,” Derek Holt, RBC’s assistant chief economist said in an interview. “We’re roughly in line with the affordability calculations of back then.”

Holt added that in the third quarter, a slight decline in average monthly income and higher utility costs drove the erosion in affordability. In previous quarters, he said, rising prices and interest rates took the biggest bite out of people’s ability to buy.

And more buyers are starting to sit on the sidelines waiting to see what will happen to prices in the coming months.

“They’re waiting for prices to come down,” Sherman Quon, a realtor with Sutton Group West Coast Realty in Vancouver said. “That’s the consensus among buyers, and … some sellers realize that the good times were earlier in the year and are not getting the prices [that … were realized earlier in the year.]”

Derek Love of Coldwell Banker Love Realty in Burnaby said well-priced listings in good neighbourhoods are selling with multiple offers, “which tells us demand is still there,” but panic has definitely left the market.

Buyers can take more time to review listings, and deals tend to take a day or two to negotiate with four or five counter-offers before settling rather than selling instantly.

“Before it was sellers’ terms, sellers’ price, seller, seller, seller,” Love said.

Now, he added, buyers have more time to consider their offers, and sometimes they’re walking away from offers that are not accepted.

Love said some buyers have read media reports suggesting that the real estate market may have peaked, and “are sitting back and saying ‘I’m going to wait and see what happens.’ “

That coincides with Holt’s observation that the pace of deteriorating affordability has started to slow “signalling a turning point in the market.”

Sales in Vancouver have slowed, Holt said, which points toward the accumulation of housing inventory, which makes it reasonable to expect price gains to cool in 2007.

“A sign of a need for that [cooling] is qualifying incomes,” Holt said.

He added that the income bar that buyers must clear to buy a standard two-storey home was 20-per-cent higher at $127,265 in the third quarter compared with the same quarter of 2005. In the meantime, real incomes have only gone up four per cent.

However, buyers shouldn’t expect the deflation of prices that followed the Vancouver market’s peak of the early 1990s, because the economy is much stronger than it was then.

Carol Frketich, regional economist for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., said Vancouver’s economic growth will support continued expansion of the housing market next year, although prices will rise closer to six per cent and not the 16 to 20 per cent seen in 2006.

Holt added that there is a higher risk for price declines in B.C., though declines would be modest.

“If you are in it for the right reasons, buying for the long-term for shelter, [real estate] is still an attractive option,” Holt said.

“If you’re looking to make a short-term speculative quick buck in this sort of market, you might want to rethink that strategy. It’s a whole set of risky conditions now.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Balance returning to Vancouver market

Jim Jamieson
Province

Greater Vancouver’s housing market is heading for a significant, but not market-busting, slowdown, says an RBC Economics national-affordability report released yesterday.

According to the RBC Affordability Index, which measures the proportion of pretax household income needed to service the costs of owning a home, B.C.’s housing affordability deteriorated for a fourth consecutive quarter across all four types of homes.

In Vancouver that was especially so. Average prices were up across the board, with two-storey homes reporting the largest dollar value gain this quarter — up nearly $12,000, to about $575,000 and absorbing 75 per cent of median household income, up from 72.9 per cent the previous quarter.

Qualifying income is based on a 25-per-cent down payment on a 25-year mortgage at a five-year fixed rate.

Derek Holt, assistant chief economist for RBC, said the trend signals an imminent change in the red-hot Vancouver market. “I think 2007 will restore a fair amount of the balance to the market,” he said.

“The pace at which new listings are coming on to the market is occurring faster than what sales are taking off the market, so those ratios are backing up in the system. In the last year, B.C. qualifying incomes have gone up by 25 per cent and before-tax income has gone up by four cent.

“That gap just isn’t sustainable.”

Holt called for “a controlled cooling,” whereby existing owners will retain most of their equity gains, while prospective buyers who have been forced to the sidelines should have new opportunities to participate.

Holt predicted the 15- to 25-per-cent annual price gains in the Vancouver housing market will slow quite substantially next year, with new-home construction and resales softening.

“By the second half of 2007, we should see a set of conditions whereby buyers who’ve been squeezed out of the market can breathe a little easier,” he said.

The next-most-expensive market, a standard two-storey home in Toronto worth $447,000, required 50.4 per cent of household income.

Nationally, condos remain the most affordable housing class, with an index of 28 per cent.

Standard townhouses were the next affordable class at 32 per cent, followed by a detached bungalow at 40.2 per cent. The standard two-storey home is still the least affordable housing type with an index reading of 45.8 per cent.

Three of the four Vancouver housing classes are on track to set records highs for affordability in the fourth quarter this year — which puts the current market on par with the stress points of the mid-1990s.

But Holt said B.C.’s economic backdrop is much different from a decade ago.

“Ten years ago, the B.C. economy was more challenged and was heading into more difficult conditions,” he said. “Currently, you have the stimulus of the Olympics, the development of oil and gas in the northeast, a vibrant software and gaming industry in the Lower Mainland, the provincial government is dealing with modest surpluses instead of deficits, and the province has booming ports because it has diversified trade to capitalize on opportunities in the Pacific Rim.

“There is a much firmer set of supports to housing markets.”

© The Vancouver Province 2006