Many Americans in major cities may feel left out by rising housing prices. But these cities have nothing on Vancouver, where a shabby house – described by realtors as a “knock-down property” valuable only for the 32-foot-wide lot underneath – recently sold for nearly 2.5 million Canadian dollars, or $1.8 million in U.S. dollars.
The stunning rise in Vancouver’s home prices is a recent phenomenon. As Justin McElroy, a Canadian journalist, pointed out on Twitter last week, the average price of a Greater Vancouver home rose as much in the past six months as it did from 1980 to 2006. (When those figures are adjusted for inflation, the trend looks even crazier. In today’s Canadian dollars, the city’s housing prices grew by only roughly $150,000 between 1980 and 2006, but shot up by $375,000 in the last six months.)
