I actually left Hernando County last evening for dinner with some Canadian friends staying in St. Petersburg. It’s become a tradition for them for the past thirty years, staying at the same gulf viewed terraced condo. A great respite after dodging the bitter last of a Nova Scotia winter that was one of the most unforgiving with snow drifts up to 20 feet.

One of my north of the border friends had just entered real estate as a career in her late 50's and I could not help to ask how the Nova Scotia market was compared to that of Hernando County.

The first thing that I learned is that my friend did not know about foreclosures nor short sales. They simply do not exist in the Province of Nova Scotia. While property values rose 100% or more here between 2003 through 2005, the values with our friends in Canada grew about 15%.

Nova Scotia homes continue to grow in value 2-4% a year, despite the world wide recession. She wrote three contracts last month, her first full month in the business for nearly $750000 and they all were approved.

Of course the down payment in her part of Canada is 30%. The economy is stable as well, except for areas such as Ottawa, where auto manufacturing is heavy and tied heavily to the US industrial economic sector.

As I listened the thought occurred that the US compared to Canada had certainly loosened credit criteria for home mortgages in the late 1990's. Canada never did.

The good news is that we agreed to a referral arrangement so her Canadian will be using me as a real estate resource for Florida homes. And Florida is a great buy!