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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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Canadian resale housing and recreational market in April continued to boil up partly because of the increased interest of the American buyers. A total of 33,000 resale houses and vocational cottages were bought in the country in the last month, which was 25 percent up compared to April 2001. At the same period the average price of a detached bungalow in Canada rose by 14 percent reaching $203,000 CAD*.

First major reason why Americans are buying recreational properties in Canada, especially from the East Coast, is the fact that the real estate in Canada is still less expensive than in the US. In the Atlantic provinces of Canada summertime cottage can be bought for just $50-60,000. Americans are particularly interested also in buying cottages in the province of British Columbia (West Coast), where the strong demand and short supply pushed prices up into record territories**.

In the recent years Canadian dollar was losing ground against its US counterpart by 20-25 percent, which further attracted the buyers from the South.

Second major reason for buying recreational property in Canada is the lower in average rate of criminal activity in this country compared to the US. Even in the major cities such as Montreal people don't always lock their cars and feel safe walking outside until midnight.

Other minor reasons for increased inflow of American buyers are milder winters in Canada in the recent years due to the global warming as well as the low interest rates in the country that make particularly interesting any new investment into the real estate.

But our picture isn't so optimistic as it seems at first sight or at least won't be very soon. The problem is that the US government trying to reinforce the border control system decided last week to impose some restrictions on the Canadian citizens planning to make long vacations in the US, mainly in Florida during the winter months. In the past they could have stayed up to 6 months visa-free. Now this gracious period is restricted to just 1 month with a possibility to apply for another month and so on.

As we can expect this restrictions aren't at all received very enthusiastically in Canada where 200,000 people every winter go in Florida to make sunbaths. Given the strong public reaction it's only a matter of time to see imposed some reciprocal measures against American vacationers.

If and when this happen Americans most probably will diminish their interest shown now for the recreational properties in Canada. Again and again politics and politicians are playing dirty tricks that hinder the free market development.

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* - All prices are in Canadian dollars ($1 US = $ 1.55 CAD).

** - In Vancouver for example the average detached bungalow reached $302,000, an all time record. Thus Vancouver confirms its reputation as being the most expensive among the major cities in Canada. In the second most expensive city - Toronto, the average price in April stood at $277,000.

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