…Many affluent Canadians are shopping for scenic crash pads to support their golf habit. Others are hunting for a retirement getaway.

“Who wants to shovel snow when you’re 65 years old?” asks Phoenix Realtor Mary Maxie, a Calgary native who specializes in helping Canadian buyers.

Either way, they’re getting more bang for their, um. Loonie. In Canada, for example, a nice house that has a pool and a spot along a golf course, might sell for $1.5 million. Maxie says. Here, the same house might sell for $500,000.

…As a result, more Canadians are buying houses here – and they’re using more cash than American buyers, because, unlike in the US, the interest on Canadian home loans is not tax deductible.

According to real estate research from Information Market, 752 Canadians bought homes in the Valley in 2007—almost double the number from 2006. Between Jan and April of 2008, at least 381 Canadians had bought homes in the Valley.

Mary is in the news

 Mary at the Great Canadian Picnic with the Mountie (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) who attends the picnic every year.

American customers are becoming rarer north of the border, in part because the Canadian dollar has risen from 65 cents U.S. to better than par within five years. Conversely, Canadians can now afford to buy more south of the 49th parallel. An excellent place to look is Phoenix, according to former Calgarian Mary Maxie, who's been selling real estate in the Arizona city for seven years. "A home on a golf course that costs $1.5 million in Calgary can be purchased here for $450,000," she says.

The metropolitan area, known as Phoenix Valley, boasts a population of about four million and a winter climate that's more consistently warm than California. Housing prices, which have fallen sharply since 2005, are a fraction of their urban equivalents on the West Coast and the supply is plentiful. Phoenix boasts major league teams in every professional sport from basketball to hockey as well as impressive cultural amenities like theatre and symphony. Maxie says Canadians typically schedule their medical care in their home province whenever possible, and buy private health insurance to cover their winters in the desert sun.
Nickle Oil Bulletin (Calgary) Profiler, Dec. 2007