As Jenny and I stepped off the airplane, we wanted to break into a commando dash across the tarmac. We had just sold our house back east and had flown across the country for a reconnaissance visit to the city that would be our new home. Now—cue the theme music from Mission: Impossible—we had just four days to do something that most couples deliberate about for months: buy a new house. That’s right, we were speed dating for real estate.

When did it happen? When did real estate turn into the topic of conversation among Canadian couples?

For some time, we all pretended otherwise. At dinner parties, friends would still chat about office politics or the latest Hollywood gossip, as if anyone still cared. Eventually, we cut the conversational foreplay and got down to what obsesses us most. Who paid what for how many square feet? (Yes, size does matter.) Were mortgage rates really going to rise? (That size matters more.) And does anyone know a good reno guy? (Okay, enough talk about size.)

At first, the real estate frenzy seemed confined to Toronto and Vancouver, where putting up a “For Sale” sign is like throwing a T-bone into a tank of piranhas. Couples in the Big Smoke have turned into house-hungry zombies, willing to wage high-stakes bidding wars over anything with a roof and four walls (three in a pinch). In the Big Wet, they line up overnight like Rolling Stones groupies for unbuilt condos in a city infamous for leaky buildings and homes that slide off mountainsides.

Other couples across Canada laughed at the way-out prices paid by big-city cappuccino slurpers. But then the realty wildfire swept across the rest of the country too. Prices started smoking in cities like Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Montréal. Smaller towns like Vernon, B.C., and Collingwood, Ont., became hot properties as baby boomers snapped up recreational homes and retirement properties. In 2005, the average price for a single-family dwelling in Canada jumped 10 percent, the biggest annual gain in 16 years.

From coast to coast, red-hot local markets have turned home buying from a rite of passage into a blood sport. Recently, newspaper columnists and real estate prognosticators have warned about rising mortgage rates and amped up anxiety by whispering the dreaded B-word: bubble. Any real estate market that balloons this fast, they claim, might pop in our faces. If it does, the smug smiles of homeowners will get tugged into frowns by plummeting prices. So what’s a house-hunting couple to do: buy now or wait until the sky falls?

Two summers ago, Jenny and I sold our house in Toronto to move west for work. After owning our Toronto home for less than two years, we made our money back and then some. We didn’t intend to, but we had flipped it like professional speculators. We made more of a profit on the house than on any of our other feeble investments, from mutual funds to hockey pools. Soon I was scheming about how we could score a bigger windfall with our next deal. “You’re starting to sound like a land baron,” warned my wife, as I described visions of a mansion by the sea.

My delusions didn’t last long after landing in Victoria, where the market was already going nuclear. On the first day of our house-hunting mission, the sticker shock of local listings jolted us like an electric fence. It was the classic Catch-22 of realty reality: Yes, we had made money selling our first home thanks to high prices, but the same trend meant we would need all those dollars and more to unlock the door to our next house. The longer we waited, the more it might cost.

In his recent bestseller Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell argues that people often make their best decisions after two-second impressions rather than weeks of consideration. Jenny and I hoped that Mr. Brainiac was right. We blitzkrieged available houses with stopwatch precision and made snap judgments like Goldilocks on speed: too hot, too cold, too small, too big, too noisy, too quiet, too far from the city, too close, too pink and shaggy, too ugh—and, most often, way too expensive.

“Don’t worry,” insisted our agent, “there’s no pressure to buy right away.” Of course, we didn’t believe him. Still, we kept our options open and looked at rental suites and sublets as backup accommodation. But renting an apartment after owning a house feels like moving back into your parents’ basement: sometimes necessary, always evil. We wanted a place of our own again. After viewing 30 houses in three days, our time was running out.

“Real estate is always good,” Donald Trump once declared. For the past few years, most couples have agreed. It’s hard to argue with The Donald when property values have doubled in many neighbourhoods without owners adding a nail of reno work. But do you really want to take advice from a smarmy egomaniac with as many ex-wives as bad hairpieces?

Not everyone thinks real estate is a sure thing. “The worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history,” claimed The Economist last year. “Prepare for the economic pain when it pops.” Pessimistic real estate bloggers and other bubble watchers are counting the days until they can type “We told you so!”

Housing prices may be escalating in Canada, but they haven’t bloated as badly as some cities in the United States, England, Ireland and Spain. Bob Dugan, chief economist for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, says the recent bubble talk is mostly hot air. He estimates that national housing prices will continue to grow (especially in oil-rich Alberta) but at slower rates, as the seller’s
market of the past four years balances out again.

Dugan explains that the real estate bubble of the late 1980s—which the Chicken Littles like to point to—was confined to Toronto and spawned mostly from speculators flipping properties, even as demand was dropping and interest rates were rising. That’s a far different scenario than the current market, in which interest rates that dipped to 50-year lows and higher job incomes have made buying a house more affordable than ever for most young couples.

“If you need a place to live and you can afford it, it’s a good time to buy,” advises Dugan. “But the purchase decision has to be very personal: it has to be based on your own income situation and job security. Will you be able to pay that mortgage two years from now if rates go up? Those kinds of things are more important to an individual decision than whether prices are going up, down or sideways.”

With less than a day to go, we did it. We found a house in our price range that fit us like an old pair of jeans (okay, maybe a frayed pair of vintage slacks, a little tight around the bum and sold for a steep markup at a consignment boutique). We put in an offer, held our breath and, after a couple hours of Ping-Pong negotiations, sealed the deal. We had spent longer shopping for a vacuum cleaner.

That quick decision didn’t make it a bad one. Two years later, the real estate comet continues to tug prices skyward on its tail. Today, like many Canadian couples, we probably couldn’t afford to buy the house we live in. Of course, what it’s worth if we sold it now is just “paper wealth”—tantalizing to dream about but as distant and alien as moon dust. And maybe as fleeting, if the real estate bubble ever gets pricked.

It doesn’t matter. When we walk through the door, we’re not stepping into an investment. Stocks or bonds may be a wiser purchase, but they won’t keep the rain off our heads at night. Instead, we bought a spot on a street we love, in a neighbourhood that lives up to that overused word, near shops and parks and schools—all the things that are still real about real estate in an unreal market.



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