Canada home buying spree continues

Toronto

AT THE central bank in Ottawa, officials are forecasting a soft landing for the housing market. On the ground in Canada, brokers and homebuyers are seeing prices that keep going up.

Re/Max, the country's largest residential real estate agency, raised its forecast for home price growth to 3 per cent from 2.5 per cent on Friday because transactions and values were so high in the first three months of this year. In March, housing sales rallied 4.1 per cent, the most in 10 months. "We're not seeing any" signs of cooling, said John McKenzie, a real estate agent at Royal LePage in Sechelt, British Columbia.

Prices in Canada have been rising since 2009, resisting regulators' efforts to cool the market by restricting credit. In Toronto and Vancouver, values have surged as much as 56 per cent in six years. Now as the European Central Bank's bond buying helps drive down ra…