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Luxury homes in Canada sold briskly during the first three months of this year, shattering records for first-quarter activity in nine of 13 Canadian markets, a RE/MAX report says.

The report called Upper End 2010 cites improved economic performance, increased personal wealth, immigration and foreign investment as catalysts in the sales surge.

The recovery in luxury home sales is “nothing short of remarkable,” said Elton Ash, regional executive vice-president of RE/MAX in Western Canada.

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Internet game, Crack Shack or Mansion?, may be the best indicator of a city’s out-of-control prices.

Petr Pospisil, a frustrated Vancouver teacher, and his girlfriend Ola Rugula have scored a viral Internet hit with their homemade game Crack Shack or Mansion? The object of the exercise is to click through a series of house photos and decide if they are North American drug dens that police have seized and shut down, or if they’re Vancouver “mansions,” which is to say a house listed this April at over $1 million. Good luck spotting the difference.

“It’s scary. I couldn’t believe what I was finding,” Pospisil, who has resigned himself to renting, told Vancouver’s Province newspaper. “I have no hope of owning anything for now.” Vancouver’s housing market has roared back. Prices are at, or above, pre-recession levels. There are any number of reasons for this: a mini post-Olympic boom, fears that low mortgage rates will soon disappear and the desire to escape cost increases July 1, when the 12-per-cent HST, the combined federal-provincial sales tax, adds to the price of new homes and real estate fees.

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Vancouver led the Canadian housing market in November existing home sales with a 252-per-cent year-to-year surge.

Victoria (+116 per cent), Toronto (+105 per cent) and Calgary (+67 per cent) followed close behind as Canada as a whole saw a 73-per-cent increase in existing home sales, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association.

Prices were also led last month by Vancouver’s 22-per-cent year-over-year rise in existing home prices.

Nationally, the 73-per-cent jump in November from a year earlier came as the real estate market continued to recover from the economic downturn.

CREA said that 36,383 residential properties were sold last month, with Ontario and Quebec setting sales records for November.

“The current strength of housing demand stands in sharp contrast to weak activity recorded one year ago,” CREA said in its report, adding that activity was just 4/10 of a per cent below the highest level for the month recorded in November 2007.

“National home sales activity last month shows how strongly the housing market has rebounded since the beginning of the year,” said CREA president Dale Ripplinger. “As we predicted last April, the rebound in resale housing activity led the overall Canadian economy out of recession.”

The national residential average price was $337,231 in November, up 19 per cent from a year earlier.