In an interview last year with the Financial Post, Brookfield Residential Properties’ CEO, Alan Norris, said, “We’re just at the beginning”. Referring to the recovery of the U.S. property market, this North American company is finally starting to see contributions coming from both sides of the border. As the second best performing home building stock in the United States, Brookfield shares soared a massive 113% over 2012, according to Bloomberg America’s Home Index.  David Baskin, of Baskin Financial Services in Toronto, Canada attributes this to a reduced level of stock. “You have a classic situation of demand building up again from new entrants in the housing market, the banks starting to…

For those new to the property market, it can be a steep learning curve. There’s a lot of information to consider before making the choice to engage in property investment.  One item to examine is possible rental income return. Doing this helps prospective buyers to compare different investments, wrote the Australia New Zealand (ANZ) bank. There are two common measures used for this: gross rental yield and rental return on investment.   Gross rental yield is the rental income received relative to the property’s value. It allows you to contrast the return between multiple homes, as well as determine how well the actual investment opportunity matches your goals. To calculate gross rental yi…

With spring just around the corner in the United States, now is a good time to consider property investment.  According to one Time magazine article, the end of winter signals what is traditionally known in America as the ‘kickoff for the annual home selling season’. Although there’s been much trepidation and speculation about the housing market over the last couple of years, David Blitzer, Chair of the Case-Schiller’s index study wrote, “Housing is clearly recovering”.   Based on statistical analysis, the Case-Schiller index looks at real estate gains or losses nationwide, and it’s most recent examination found that prices rose 5.5% in 2012, stronger than the 4.3% improvement in 2011. Cle…