Just listed on BestHomesBC is a high end 2-bedroom apartment for sale in the Woodwards development in Vancouver’s Gastown area. This corner unit faces Northwest, offering the best views in the building with all rooms directly facing the water and mountains, with gorgeous views to the west over Canada Place to the Olympic rings and Stanley Park. Renowned for its on-site amenities and rooftop fitness and recreation facility, Woodwards is a landmark building in Vancouver’s historic Gastown district. Please follow this link, Woodwards condo Gastown, to view the property’s details and to contact the Realtor, Hayden Ross of Multiple Realty Limited, directly.

Though housing markets are on the upswing and presales back in force, the assignment trade is starting to stage a comeback – but with nowhere near the strength it had in 2006, according to an article in this week’s Business in Vancouver publication, written by Peter Mitham.

“For those that persevered and bought on the basis of a floor plan and show suite, the investment rewards were sweet, with news of presale units appreciating in the range of 50% to 100%,” said Nicola Way, manager of the online listings site AssignmentsCanada.ca.

But inquiries from realtors looking to list assignments have increased in the past quarter in tandem with the uptick in markets. They’re up 30%, according to Way, with listings on AssignmentsCanada.ca rising 20% over the same period.

“Assignments become more attractive as price points increase,” she said. “With the BCREA posting the highest level of sales in six years for the month of October, and the average Metro Vancouver house price up 15% compared to October 2008, all of this spells good news for assignment listings as they can be more competitively pitched against rising prices.”

For a while now, Google’s Street View service has been incorporated into BestHomesBC.com to give users a total experience when searching for properties on the internet. They can zoom into Google Maps and explore the 3D world at street level thereby enabling them to view first hand the streets and environment for each property listed on BestHomesBC.com.

Just for fun, we thought we would share with you the newest addition to Street View, the ruins at Pompeii – the city that was buried under molten lava when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.

Click here to see Google’s Street View of the ruins at Pompeii

We at BestHomesBC.com and AssignmentsCanada.ca employ social media to drive traffic to the properties listed on the two sites. The world is changing in the way that people utilize resources. Welcome to the Social Media Revolution: Is social media a fad or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution? This video details social media facts and figures that are hard to ignore. Produced by the author of Socialnomics.