Just who's buying Vancouver's zillion-dollar condos?

The hottest ticket in Vancouver this week was not for a concert or a play, but a lunch hosted by the Urban Development Institute. And they call this place No Fun City.

The guest speaker was local condo merchant Bob Rennie, whose take on the city's unrelenting real-estate market is considered by many to be as reliable as government bonds. The event was sold out weeks ago.

To call Mr. Rennie a condo seller doesn't quite do him justice. In the past 10 years or so his company - Rennie Marketing Systems - has sold more than 10,000 units. Last year, sales totalled $1.5-billion. Not bad for a kid who grew up without much on the city's east side - long before homes there became million-dollar lottery tickets.

International buyers eye Canadian real estate

Canada's dollar has had its strongest performance in years. From a record low of 62 cents on the U.S. dollar in January 2002, the currency now matches the U.S. greenback in value. And the second-home housing market at the high end, in places like Victoria on Vancouver Island and Chester, Nova Scotia, is flourishing.

Who's buying? Along with affluent Americans unaffected by the recession, Europeans looking for more remote luxury destinations are also finding second homes in Canada. U.K.-based real estate firm Knight Frank is even in the midst of developing a property in Whistler, British Columbia, to attract skiers from across the pond.

Why I will always buy real estate

So, take it easy. If you had listened to the experts who were dispensing the best advice available 20 years ago and locked yourself and your wealth into a plan which guaranteed to remit the then prevailing 'safe amount' of an income stream of $500 per month (a lot back then - pocket-change today) for the rest of your life, imagine the desperate poverty that you would retire to today. Stone soup would be a luxury.

Yes, we need more money now but who knows what this money will be worth tomorrow. Yes, we need more income, but who can possibly know the state of the world three months from now ... much less 20 years from now? Nobody knows for sure the 'what and where' of interest rates and inflation rates and the value of money. It's just not possible.