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Miranda Pearson remembers that when she decided to leave her common-law partner, with whom she was renting an apartment, she began secretly searching for a property to buy. Once the relationship fell apart, she saw real estate as her ticket to freedom.

"I expect it's quite common, that people secretly scour the real estate," says the soft-spoken Briton who is a well-known Vancouver poet and educator. "I felt very guilty about it. I knew I wanted to buy somewhere, but not with him. I was having a secret affair with my realtor.

"But not a real one," she adds, laughing.

Her story illustrates what most brokers — at least those who care to admit it — have long known: When married or common-law couples go their separate ways, the real estate market often benefits. Toronto kingpin condo marketer Brad Lamb, for instance, estimates that sales due to couples splitting up represent about 25 per cent of his business.

"I love the divorce market," Mr. Lamb says in a phone interview. "I would say that certainly a quarter of our business is attributed to the breakdown of the marriage — which we are encouraging should break down every three and a half years.

"I'm advocating that very strongly," he adds, tongue-in-cheek.

Turning serious, he says divorce is a "terrible thing" for people to go through.

"But for real estate agents, we do really well because we sell them the apartments they both lived in before they get together, then they get married and buy a bigger apartment or house, and we sell them that. Then when they split up, inevitably, five years later, we sell the house or condo, and they buy two more.

"In a matter of five years, you are doing six or seven transactions, as opposed to 20 years ago, [when] you'd be doing just one."

And it's not just older couples who are divorcing, but people in their 20s and 30s. Gone are the days when mom and dad stayed together in the same house for 50 years.

Some real estate agents are wary of discussing the effect of relationship breakdowns on their business. In fact, several refused to be interviewed for this story.

"Readers might associate me somehow with divorce, and yuck, yuck, yuck," one high-profile Vancouver agent says.

"That's like ambulance-chasing," says Vancouver real estate expert Bob Rennie, head of Rennie Marketing Systems.

But Mr. Lamb says: "You can't put your head in the sand [and] not … acknowledge the realities of the world. Divorce in first-world countries is a huge economic benefactor to many, many, many businesses, not just real estate."

Scott Shallow, a top-selling agent with Brad J. Lamb Realty, is one such benefactor. He estimates that relationship breakdowns can at times account for as much as one-third of his business.

"There was a time in the summer I kept spinning my head around in circles because the phone would be ringing every day and it would be somebody splitting up and they would want me to sell their place and find them two others," he says.

"It's a fantastic part of the business," he adds, laughing. "You know? It's unfortunate, but it's certainly keeping things alive in the real estate market."

In fact, he's currently helping a divorced couple find separate homes. But, so amicable is their split, they are viewing the same properties together.

"They're not all like that — trust me," Mr. Shallow says. "Most of them are like, 'I need a rental right now. I don't care how. Get it tomorrow. I'm packing my suitcase right now.'"

In Ms. Pearson's case, she borrowed money from her parents for a down payment, and purchased a one-bedroom condo suite in Vancouver's tony Kerrisdale Village for $150,000. She sold it three years ago for $200,000, and bought a two-bedroom unit in the city's Kitsilano neighbourhood for $312,000. Today, the 1,000-square-foot condo, which she shares with her son, is worth about $500,000.

She believes the high cost of real estate in Vancouver has changed the rules of relationships. "The stakes are higher," she says, seated in her comfortable living room overlooking the North Shore Mountains.

"I know quite a few people who would break up if it weren't for the cost of real estate," she adds. "They are living in a nice house and they don't want to downsize to a condo, or they just can't."

When Vancouver writer Mary Frances Hill packed her suitcase, however, she didn't need a real estate agent. She had held on to the condo suite she was living in even when she moved into her fiancé's house. They had a child, but the relationship ended and two years later, Ms. Hill moved back to her Mount Pleasant condo as a single mom.

"It made it easier to leave," she says. "When things went awry, I wasn't so desperate. I had this freedom in my back pocket.

"It's realistic in Vancouver's real estate market," she adds.

Mr. Shallow understands that feeling, because he's witnessed it first hand.

"For a lot of people … it's so nice just to be free and portable, and stick the key in the door and turn it and, 'That's my life.' No emotional baggage. No planting flowers, shovelling snow, cutting the grass, cleaning this huge house. All that crap."

It's an urban joke to label certain easy-living condo buildings "Divorce Towers" or "Divorce Court because it's believed a lot of divorced people live there.

But Mr. Rennie, the Vancouver property marketer, doesn't believe such buildings exist.

"Usually, you find guys with ponytails and old cellphones and big briefcases moving into hip places, and they hit on girls," he notes dryly.

"If I was told to shoo, I know exactly where I'd move into," Mr. Shallow adds jokingly. "I wouldn't want to live there … but if you're a single person you move into buildings like Waterpark City [at Bathurst Street and Lake Shore Boulevard].

"I sell apartments sometimes there, and in the summertime [clients and I] go up onto the rooftop common terrace and there will be two women lying face down with nothing but a thong on."

Such a singles club setting is just a temporary stopover for most, however — more good news for the real estate business.

"Nobody wants to admit that they will be single for the rest of their life," Mr. Lamb says. "They meet Mr. Right or Mrs. Right and then they sell again. The whole process rotates every five years to the day.

"It's tremendous for real estate brokers and developers."

Special to The Globe and Mail