Whistler: Foreign Ownership by the Numbers
Vancouver, BC - February, 2011  

We thought the Winter Olympics would bring a lot of foreign owners and real-estate business back to Whistler and right now, it hasn't happened," says Nielsen, president and founder of Landcor Data Corporation.

Rather than igniting a foreign-buying boom in Whistler, the Landcor post-Olympic numbers actually show a steady 'slippage' of condo/apartment and 'attached' sales to foreign owners. However, top-end single-family detached product remains stable.

"The probable reason is the worldwide recession; people aren't traveling too much," muses Nielsen. "The important thing is that despite the recession, the Whistler market is holding and I think it will only get better."

Pointing back more than 20 years ago when BC first invited the world to visit, Nielsen believes, given time, the positive effects of the 2010 Winter Olympics will blossom: "We can compare the Winter Olympics to Expo 86. Province wide, we saw about $12 billion in real estate sales back in 1986. Over the next three years, real estate sales climbed to about $28 billion per annum. People were coming back to look at British Columbia. This will happen again."

Source: Landcor Data Corporation