A good friend of mine, Vancouver REALTOR Kye Grace, is holding a 72 hour open house in Gastown this weekend. Armed with his laptop, Kye will be streaming Vancouver's first 72 hour open house via a Ustream video broadcast available @ 72 Hr Open House Video Feed.

The property, located @ #21, 120 Powell Street, is a Heritage loft in the Pilkington House, which was built in 1910 and was a Glass Warehouse for the Pilkington Glass Company until 1950. The building was converted to 6 loft units on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors and one large office space on the ground level in 1993. The building has a rich history as a glass factory where many of Vancouver's classic building's windows were built including the windows in the original St. Pauls Hospital in 1932. The property is listed @ $999,950

Stop by and see how Kye is making out anytime from 10am Jan 23rd to 10am Jan 26th. Those of you in the Vancouver area might also consider contacting Kye on Twitter @KyeGrace. I'm sure he'd love for you to drop by with some pizza!

Jim Sparrow sells Calgary Real Estate with Keller Williams Platinum Realty & specializes in South Calgary estate and luxury homes. Visit our website at Calgary Luxury Real Estate or contact me directly at 403.703.2404

Warren Buffett & Bill Gates, who are the first & third richest men on the planet, visited the Horizon oil sands project near Fort McMurray on Monday. The pair, worth an estimated $120-billion combined, quietly flew into the Alberta resource town as guests of Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ.TO) and were given a private tour of the massive $9.3-billion CDN project. CAPP, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, was asked to give the two tycoons an overview of the conventional and oil sands industry.

Buffett Considers Additional Oilsands Investment?

Buffett has invested in large oil sands holdings with ConocoPhillips which is a joint venture partner with Encana, Canada's largest upstream oil & gas explorer. There have been suggestions that Buffett and his company, Berkshire Hathaway, are looking to make sizable investments in the Canadian oil & gas industry, and the billionaire pair's visit did nothing to diminish that rumour. Al Markin and Murray Edwards, CNQ's chairman & vice-chairman, hosted Buffett & Gates.

Oil Sands Production

While present oil sands production stands at just over 1-million barrels per day, CAPP predicts the production will rise to just under 5-million barrels per day by the year 2020.

Jim Sparrow sells Calgary Real Estate with Keller Williams Platinum Realty & specializes in South Calgary estate and luxury homes. Visit our website at Calgary Luxury Real Estate or contact me directly at 403.703.2404

These new regulations are part of federal legislation (Bill C-25) passed in 2007 that requires a number of industries, including real estate, to do more to help stop money laundering and terrorist financing. The regulations are enforced by the federal agency known as the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC.

REALTORS will be required to ask for and record the name, address, date of birth and occupation of property buyers and sellers, plus ID such as a driver's licence or passport. Also under the new FINTRAC regulations, real estate associates dealing with clients they never meet must also verify their personal information. This will require the broker office to hire an associate or mandatary in the area where the client is located. That associate or mandatary must then meet the client, verify the identification of the client, and provide the information to the broker office actually handling the real estate transaction.

Should a client refuse to disclose the information, a REALTOR would have to walk away from the deal or report the person to FINTRAC.

Jim Sparrow sells Calgary Real Estate with Keller Williams Platinum Realty & specializes in South Calgary estate and luxury homes. Visit our website at Calgary Luxury Real Estate or contact me directly at 403.703.2404

• one a natural gas company with an outstanding portfolio of early life, North American, natural gas resource plays (GasCo)
• the other a fully integrated oil company with industry-leading in-situ oilsands properties and top-performing refineries, as well as an underlying foundation of reliable oil and gas resource plays (IntegratedOilCo or IOCo)

Under the proposed transaction, expected to be completed in early 2009, EnCana common shareholders will receive one share in each of GasCo and IOCo in exchange for each EnCana share held. Dividends from each of the operating companies are expected to total the quarterly $0.40/share Encana shares currently being paid.

Encana Corporation has a current market capitalization of about $75 billion (CDN).

*Monday Update*: Encana stock opened at $93/share Monday morning, and at noon was trading just under $93/share (up 7.5% from Friday's $86.52 close)

The designated executives of the two companies are:

IOCo:

• Brian Ferguson, EnCana's Chief Financial Officer, is designated President and Chief Executive Officer
• Ivor Ruste, EnCana's Chief Risk Officer, is designated Chief Financial Officer
• John Brannan, President, Integrated Oil, will continue to lead this division
• Don Swystun, President, Canadian Plains, will continue to lead this division

GasCo:

• Randy Eresman is designated President & Chief Executive Officer
• Sherri Brillon, EnCana's Executive Vice-President, Strategic Planning & Portfolio Management, is designated Chief Financial Officer
• Mike Graham, President, Canadian Foothills, will continue to lead this division
• Jeff Wojahn, President, USA, will continue to lead this division

EnCana's other corporate officers, Sheila McIntosh, Executive Vice-President, Corporate Communications; Bill Oliver, Executive Vice-President Corporate Development and President, Midstream & Marketing; Gerry Protti, Executive Vice-President, Corporate Relations and President, Offshore & International Division and Hayward Walls, Executive Vice-President, Corporate Services, will also have executive roles in one of the two companies.

Jim Sparrow sells Calgary Real Estate with Keller Williams Platinum Realty & specializes in South Calgary estate and luxury homes. Visit our website at Calgary Luxury Real Estate or contact me directly at 403.703.2404

(Tuesday April 22, 2008) - The Bank of Canada cut the overnight rate by 50 basis points this morning, bringing the target rate to 3.00%. The overnight rate is the rate at which major participants in the money markets borrow and lend one-day funds to each other. This is the second 50 bps rate cut in a row, and marks the first time since the 2001 US recession that the Bank has cut rates by a full percentage point in just six weeks time.

In their communiqu, the Bank notes that “buoyant growth in domestic demand…has been substantially offset by the fall in net exports.” Due to a “deeper and more protracted slowdown in the U.S. economy,” this drag from trade is expected to remain. And, in spite of financial conditions exacerbating these problems somewhat, the low level of unemployment and aggressive easing from the Bank to date highlights why many Canadians have remained fairly sheltered from the U.S. and financial-centred woes.

The Bank now forecasts the Canadian economy will expand by 1.4% in 2008 (down from 1.8%) and 2.4% in 2009 (down from 2.8%). They also see inflation now running below 1.5% by both the core and headline measures not returning to its 2% target until 2010.

Richard Kelly, senior economist with TD Bank Financial Group, expects the Bank of Canada's Monetary Policy Report to project dramatically lower expectations for U.S. and global growth compared to their January forecasts. Last week the Bank released their Business Outlook Survey for Spring 2008, which confirmed the availability of credit remains as bad as it was last summer. The Bank hopes to ease these pressures through its continued aggressive rate cuts and injections of liquidity into the financial markets, however imbalances in the financial sectors will continue to impair short-term borrowing.

It's likely the Bank of Canada will call for another 50 basis point rate cut at their next meeting on June 10th.

Jim Sparrow sells Calgary Real Estate with Keller Williams Platinum Realty & specializes in South Calgary estate and luxury homes. Visit our website at Calgary Luxury Real Estate or contact me directly at 403.703.2404

History was made on February 19, 2008 as NYMEX Crude Oil closed above $100 per barrel for the first time in history. While crude oil futures had traded above $100/bbl twice before earlier in this year, today marked the first day the futures contract actually closed the day above the $100/bbl mark. The front-month (March '08) contract for west Texas light crude oil was up $4.51 to close at $100.01 per barrel.

OPEC To Cut Production?

Today's run-up came after comments by the Iranian oil minister suggesting it was normal for OPEC to cut production in March, as US demand shrinks as the winter heating season comes to an end. Springtime and fall are known as "shoulder seasons" in the industry - oil demand shrinks as heating / cooling demand is down and the summer driving season is either yet to come or just over. Traders also took the explosion and fire at the Big Spring refinery in Texas as a buying signal, contributing to today's price spike.

Oil Price To Drop

Meanwhile, in after-hours trading, the price of oil fell by as much as 90 cents to $99.11/bbl as traders locked in profits and speculated that the US inventory numbers, due to be released Thursday this week, will show stockpiles are up. Many analysts are suggesting the price of oil will retreat to the mid $80 level in the coming months as demand moderates in the slower shoulder months.

Resource Stocks Trade Higher

On the Canadian markets today, most resource stocks traded higher. Suncor closed at $99.59/share, while Encana shares got a boost as natural gas futures shot up to just under $9 per Gigajoule, the highest level seen since June 2007. South of the border, Exxon-Mobil closed up $1.64/share at $87.01, while Chevron Corp was up $1.23/share to close at $84.83.

Jim Sparrow sells Calgary Real Estate with Royal LePage Solutions & specializes in South Calgary estate and luxury homes. Visit our website at Calgary Luxury Real Estate or contact me directly at 403.703.2404

The Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World contest has now gone viral - webmasters and bloggers around the world have joined the competition to be awarded the coveted "Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World" award.

The phrase "Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World" currently shows 956,000 results when doing a search for the term on Google (see Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World). We now invite all REALTORs (and their webmasters) to show their SEO stuff by trying to rank for this term.

Here's how it works - optimize a page on your websites / blogs for the term Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World, and on May 1st (2008), the highest ranking website/blog for this term (as averaged across multiple Google DC's) will win:

• A free REW template website ($740 value)
• Free hosting for a year on the new V 2.0 REW platform ($480)
• A $2500 CORE IDX and the $360 yearly fee on top of it

That works out to about $4,080 for first place - how's THAT for a prize?

Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World - Full Contest Details

• Contest begins: Now (February 12, 2008)
• Contest ends: May 01, 2008
• Open to: Everyone & anyone who'd like to participate
• You may use any domain / blog in your control
• The person controlling the highest ranked web page or blog for the phrase Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World in Google on May 1/08 wins (as determined by a check across multiple Google data-centers) wins
• You CAN NOT use the word REALTOR in a domain or use any other domains that violates a member mark or copyright phrase / trademark
• You may use MLS in your domain names
• Anyone participating in this contest must provide on "their" entry / competing page, a minimum one paragraph writeup on something they learned / observed on someone else's competing page.

Eric Blackwell has started a page that might gain him (and his team) a lot of traction in this contest (see Eric Blackwell's Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World Contest page). Eric has decided to "recruit" 10 agent members by offering them immortality should he win. Great thinking Eric!

How To Begin

Simply

1. Create or optimize a blog / webpage / website for the term "Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World"
2. Return to the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World Contest blog post and leave a comment, indicating your name and the URL of the page / blog post you've optimized
3. Pass a copy of this blog post on to everyone you know who might be interested in either entering the contest OR providing you with a backlink to your page/blog post

Let the games begin!

Jim Sparrow sells Calgary Real Estate with Royal LePage Solutions & specializes in South Calgary estate and luxury homes. Visit our website at Calgary Luxury Real Estate or contact me directly at 403.703.2404

(February 12, 2008) Sales of Alberta oilsands leases and licenses are down dramatically this year as compared with the same time the past two years. Results from last weeks sales saw only $150,000 worth of oilsand leases sold, the lowest amount generated in over two years.

To date in 2008, oilsand landsales have generated the province of Alberta only $25-million, versus $138-million the same time last year and over $846-million the same time in 2006. Peter Tertzakian of ARC Financial Corp commented "There's a lot of uncertainty about the environmental legislation that's coming at us . . . rising costs are an issue. Put all those things together and there's no question that the excitement that was there in '06 seems to have tapered off."

Carbon Tax Likely

The environmental legislation Tertzakian refers to relates to concerns oil companies have of a future federal carbon tax, which likely will be implemented long before many of the proposed oilsand projects ever produce a single barrel of oil. Canada is under intense pressure from world-powers to put a carbon tax in place that will cost producers millions for carbon dioxide emissions associated with the production of the tar-sand bitumen.

The other concern oil-sand producers have are rising costs, not only from a material / labour point of view, but ultimately the increased royalties the province of Alberta is poised to implement. The recent royalty review process the Stelmach government carried out has recommended significant increases to oil and gas royalties paid by not only conventional oil and gas producers, but primarily the oilsands. Many companies are now reviewing their proposed oilsands projects, while some have even deferred their projects while they re-examine the economics in light of the soaring capital costs and probable royalty changes.

The oilsands in northern Alberta hold close to an estimated 200 billion barrels of crude oil, and production was forecast to more than quadruple from the current 1.1-million barrels a day by the year 2020. CAPP (Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers) has now trimmed their 2020 oilsands output forecast to 3.8-million barrels a day.

Jim Sparrow is a consistent top-producing Calgary REALTOR with Keller Williams Platinum Realty specializing in South Calgary estate and luxury homes. Visit our website at Calgary Real Estate or contact me directly at 403.703.2404

(Feb 11, 2008) Power is off in most of South Calgary this morning as Enmax crews attempt to diagnose the cause of the disruption. There was a minor power bump around 7:15 this morning due to an outage in a single substation near the SE community of Douglasdale, but a cascading failure at 10:15 took an additional 5 substations offline.

Enmax crews are working on the problem and hope to have power restored before 1PM today. Let's hope that's the case, as even though it's warmer out today (currently about -10C), we've already resorted to sweaters (and battery power for computers). Close to 70,000 customers have been affected by the outage.

*11:45AM Update* While power has been restored to a number of communities in SW Calgary, there are still approximately 50,000 customers who remain in the dark. Enmax is saying "Redundancies in the power system, which usually compensate for outages, were in this case unavailable due to planned upgrade activities."

Jim Sparrow sells Calgary Real Estate with Keller Williams Platinum Realty & specializes in South Calgary estate and luxury homes. Visit our website at Calgary Luxury Real Estate or contact me directly at 403.703.2404

(February 05, 2008) Since August 2007 the Fed cut rates by no less than 225 basis points. This is the most aggressive easing since the early 1980s when the Fed was targeting money supply growth and not inflation. But the market is expecting more. Note that the bond market is already pricing in a recession. And in every recession the inflation-adjusted fed funds rate was negative.

Today at 3%, the fed funds rate is about one percentage point above inflation. So its hardly a surprise that the market is now pricing in another 100 basis points rate cut by the Fed. At the minimum, the market will get 50 basis points. And if we are indeed in a recession, the Fed will cut by additional 50 basis points.

Libor Rate Down

The good news is that the Libor rate (inter-bank loan rate) is starting to react to the Feds moves and it is down by 175 basis points over the past few months. But the market is still nervous—and the reason is the fate of the monoline insurers—which is probably the most critical issue facing the market at this point. What happens when a monoline is downgraded is simply that the underlying value of its written protection declines. If a monoline goes under, the underlying protection would effectively be worthless.

Read the complete article at North American & International Economic Highlights

Source: CIBC World Markets (Benjamin Tal, Senior Economist)

Jim Sparrow sells Calgary Real Estate with Keller Williams Platinum Realty & specializes in South Calgary estate and luxury homes. Visit our website at Calgary Luxury Real Estate or contact me directly at 403.703.2404