Real estate market still going strong

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/04/2021 (1713 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kathy and Jim Jackson just bought a house in Brandon in March. They moved here from Brantford, Ont.

The retired couple sold their house in Brantford for $90,000 over the asking price.

“We thought it should go for $600,000 and the real estate agent said, “Ask $650,000.”

When it was all said and done, the Jacksons walked away with a nice little down payment on their home in Brandon.

Their experience is a typical one in Canada’s hot housing market.

The home they purchased in Brandon was a fraction of the price a new home in Brantford would have cost them.

“We wanted to move years ago in Brantford, but to sell in Brantford and buy in Brantford, you can’t do it,” Kathy said.

Their home in Brantford was 1,175 square feet, a back split with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The home they purchased in Brandon has four bedrooms, three full bathrooms, a double garage, a developed basement and yard.

The offer, which was accepted, was just over half of what they sold their home for in Brantford.

Jim explained the bidding war he left in Brantford, which saw 10 bids in four days. The new owner made his bid unconditional, which meant there were no requests to change the original bid. In fact, the new owner pushed to move into the Jacksons’ home as soon as possible.

On Jan. 28, they accepted the offer on their home. By March 16, they were sitting in their new 1,550-square-foot house in Brandon.

Their daughter played a pivotal role in securing the house in Brandon for her parents, too.

She lives in Shilo, where she and her partner are in the military. She was instrumental in securing a house for her parents, sight unseen.

“She videoed the house for us. She walked through it with the real estate agent and we bought the house sight unseen,” Kathy explained.

There’s a lot of trust between the Jacksons and their daughter.

“She’s the kind of kid who would call us every night even though she didn’t have to.”

Rather than pack themselves and drive across the country in a pandemic, they hired a moving company that packed and hauled their furniture for them.

“That cost $11,000,” Jim said.

Their car was shipped separately at a cost of $1,600. Then, there was the hotel stay and flight.

The house they bought in Brandon will take about $30,000 in renovations they estimate, once they pull the carpet from two bedrooms and replace it with hardwood flooring, change the cupboards in the kitchen and upgrade one of the bathrooms.

The couple will do the renos themselves as much as they can, but realize there’s a lumber shortage in the country brought on by the pandemic and are willing to wait until supplies are more readily available.

Today, the Jacksons are a stone’s throw from their daughter, her partner and grand-doggies.

It’s a move that has made the retired crane operator and former nurse embrace the slower pace of life Brandon offers.

Ultimately, they’re closer to their only child, and that makes them both pretty happy.

The Jacksons’ experience with selling a home in a hot housing market in a short turnaround time and purchasing another home just as quickly is pretty typical of what’s occurring in Canada and the Brandon area, according to Jen Pearson, executive officer for Brandon Area Realtors.

The Brandon Area Realtors covers a large area.

“We have 270 realtor members in our board,” she said. “We are about as far east as Portage la Prairie, as far north as Thompson, as far south as the U.S. border and right to the Saskatchewan border.”

As in the rest of Canada, real estate in the Brandon area has exploded.

“Residential sales for Brandon are up 54 per cent over 2020,” she explained. Condominium sales are up by 58 per cent over the same time period.

“COVID didn’t really affect us until the end of March 2020. It was a bit of a slow start.”

However, by the end of March this year, 158 residential single-family homes have sold since Jan. 1, 2021. For the same period last year, only 72 sold.

Pearson said the national market is showing upwards of a 48 per cent increase in home sale prices.

“We’re not experiencing anything like that,” she pointed out.

Year-to-date, the average price for a single family home is up by 12 per cent. Condo sales are up too.

“This year, it’s jumped significantly.”

The average length of time a house is on the market today is 31 days, said Pearson.

In 2020, the average length of time a house was on the market was 52 days. Pearson said houses that have been on the market for 300 days have just recently sold.

“We’ve had a lot of properties selling on the first day, but there are no exact numbers.”

“Our entire board is seeing a busier spring market than last year,” she said.

Generally, the entire province is experiencing rapid growth in the housing market.

Virtual tours of houses due to the pandemic do not appear to have slowed things down either. Realtors are changing the way they do business.

“They’re adapting. They’re doing virtual tours and getting as good a showing as you can from across the country,” Pearson said.

Sellers are rejoicing while buyers are bowing down to the market.

“There’s a low inventory and high demand.”

At a 1.6 per cent lending rate, interest rates are the lowest they’ve ever been. People who normally wouldn’t be able to afford a down payment for a house are in the unique position of having extra cash from working at home, spending less on incidentals and kids’ activities. The list goes on and on. No longer is it as big a deal to live in an urban centre. Workdays involve the kitchen table and Zoom meetings.

“People are spending more time hanging out at home, realizing what their needs are,” Pearson said. Based on the hot housing market, it appears people are looking at their options and moving into bigger or smaller homes, away from the hustle and bustle of a large city.

“We really had a ‘steady as she goes’ market for the last five years until this year.”

Economic spinoffs from a booming housing market can’t be ignored either.

Lawyer’s fees, movers, house inspections, and so on are placed in the melting pot.

That helps stimulate the economy as well, Pearson noted.

At a 2021 Market Insights event held in February, the Winnipeg Regional Real Estate Board (WRREB) president Kourosh Doustshenas pointed out how important the real estate industry sector as a whole is in its contribution to the economy. With every sale, there is a $53,000 economic spinoff.

February Statistics from the Manitoba Real Estate Association for the residential housing market for the province showed new listings had increased by 0.06 per cent compared to the same period last year. The number of properties sold increased by 48.2 per cent, but the biggest increase was felt in the total dollar volume at $411.6 million, a 69.7 per cent increase compared to the same time last year.

Pearson thinks even after the pandemic, people aren’t going to return to the urban areas they once frequented.

“People are going to continue to work from home. They’re seeing that as one of the bigger driving factors in larger areas which always influences the whole market.”

Potentially, they will give up the small condo downtown to move to the suburbs and live for less, stay home and work.

Or, like the Jacksons, they’ll move to Brandon to be closer to their kids.

» kkielley@brandonsun.com