January 26, 2010 - Led by a resilient housing market, Canada's economy is on the mend. In fact, contrasting the US market, the concern in Canada is not whether housing will recover, but when it will stop rising. Have investors missed the opportunity to buy cash-flow properties and has Canada reached a bubble? Not so, at least from Canadian Real Estate's research.

One key factor helping to keep smiles on many investors' faces is some of the cheapest finance on record. At the time of writing, variable mortgage rates were just 2.5 per cent. Affordability is now at pre-housing boom levels.

"With the widespread availability of affordable mortgage financing, and only modest increases in home prices, affordability is better now than it has been in a number of years," says Phil Soper, president and chief executive at Royal LePage. "We expect house prices and interest rates to remain relatively stable into spring which would keep affordability levels intact."

At the moment, national property prices are higher than they were a year ago. In October 2009, the average price of a property was $341,079, up from $282,583 in October 2008, reports CREA.

Experts agree the bottom line is that interest rates drive the real estate market and with rates still so low right now, people are buying.

Whatever your property of choice, there are a few areas that are currently performing better than others in today's market. Here, we dig deep to uncover the five key locations that are ripe for the picking. Each of these centers will experience major growth, transition, price stability, tightening vacancy and increasing rents in 2010.

For the full article, pick up a copy of the February 2010 issue of CRE, currently on newsstands