The rush to develop Alberta's oil sands delivers windfall to property owners and agents in the resource-rich province
Lisa Hartigan is bursting with confidence. The leading property agent in Fort McMurray - the epicentre of Canada' s oil sands boom - just sold her 90th house this year. On a map of the bustling city in northern Alberta Mrs Hartigan points out where the action is: everywhere.
'I sell one house every three days, and this is not the end of the story,' she said.
The red-hot economy in Fort McMurray - dubbed Fort McMoney - is fuelled by a massively expanded extraction of oil rich tar sands in an area the size of Belgium.
The 'City on steroids', as regional papers call Fort McMurray, has electrified western Canada and is going to become the biggest source of additional oil in the world by the end of the decade, according to investment bank CIBC World Markets.
With 173 billion barrels of oil, the bitumen around Fort McMurray is already the second largest reserve after Saudi Arabia. Energy companies have promised or planned investments of about C$80 billion (HK$556.6 billion) in the oil patch, setting alight the real estate market.
