Canadians flocking to buy homes in Southeast Valley

Virtually every week during the past two years, a Valley home was sold for at least $1 million to a Canadian buyer. The majority of the homes are in Scottsdale, but Mesa, Gilbert and Queen Creek are also on the luxury list, with individual sales between $1.3 million and nearly $3.8 million. The transactions, totaling nearly $300 million, are an indication that Canada's preference for Arizona as the No. 1 place to invest is growing, said Glenn Williamson, founder and CEO of the Canada Arizona Business Council, a non-profit that promotes bilateral trade. The Canadian purchases represent at least 6 percent of the 1,742 homes sold in Maricopa County for $1 million, or more, since Jan. 1, 2009, according to Ben Toma, broker for Toma Partners, a Phoenix real estate firm that specializes in sales of luxury homes. Toma and other agents called the transactions a significant chunk of the high-end housing market and said there are probably more such sales to Canadians that have not yet been identified in surveys. A recent report by Valley real-estate analyst R.L. Brown identified nearly 500 Valley home sales to Canadians in 2010. The report said the homes were bought from more than builders. Many of the sales in Mesa - 96 of them in communities developed by builder Jeff Blandford - indicated that Canadians were influencing other Canadians to buy homes in the same communities. Other sales were in Gilbert, Chandler and Queen Creek.

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