Arizona Real Estate Notebook

In real estate, the only thing more important than location, location, location is timing, timing, timing. Now is the time for Canadians and Europeans to buy Arizona real estate. These exchange rates won’t last forever.

One group hasn’t soured on the U.S. real-estate market: foreign buyers.

With the dollar at historic lows against the euro and other currencies, real-estate agents, appraisers and developers say overseas buyers are stepping up their purchases in the U.S. Some are buying vacation homes in Florida, California and Colorado that would previously have been considered out of reach. Others are gambling that properties purchased now will translate into savvy investments down the road, when both the dollar and the U.S. housing market eventually rebound.

This is perhaps the best time since the 1970′s for Canadians to buy Arizona real estate.

Calgary, Alberta, resident Verna Shewchuk says she and her husband, Dennis, had been considering buying a vacation home in a golf community in the U.S. for several years before making an offer on a $2.75 million home in Scottsdale, Ariz., in June. They closed on the property three months later, when the Canadian dollar was valued at about 95 U.S. cents — one of the best rates in years. Still, it wasn’t as good as a month later, when the loonie passed the U.S. dollar in value. (It is now at US$1.02.) “If we’d waited a month, it would have been even better for us,” Ms. Shewchuk says.

Earlier this month I calculated that Arizona home prices were 12% cheaper for Canadians than they were in January because of U.S. dollars were cheaper.