XLR8 Realty offers Real Estate services throughout Ontario and encourages our readers to come to us with any Real Estate questions. Looking at examples across the province to get a scope of the general market and the trends happening today. XLR8 found an interesting article about how home prices have doubled in Windsor Ontario since the pandemic.
One could buy a house with multiple bedrooms, a backyard, and a nice lakefront view — for less than $400,000. And then selling it only twelve months later for nearly double the price? Since COVID-19 city buyers have flocked to small towns over the past two years in search of cheaper houses with more space than their tiny downtown condos. While this is great for sellers, this situation is not good for the plans of young homebuyers. Many of whom were relying upon buying an affordable home in a smaller city and settling down. The Windsor area has long been a low-key hotbed for these types of folks — the ones who knew about it, anyway – attracting Torontonians long before COVID hit with its real estate prices, warmer weather, and quick access to the U.S. border.
Today, two years after the onset of the COVID crisis, that market looks unbelievably different, outside of home prices doubling in Ontario.
Home prices have doubled in Ontario. The average price of all homes sold across the City of Windsor in February 2020 was $386,285. In February of 2022, it was $704,112, an increase in average home prices of roughly 82 percent. Year-over-year, the same data set shows an increase of about 45 percent (up from an average price of $486,461 in Feb. 2021). Home prices have doubled in Ontario.
The Windsor housing market has been interesting to watch throughout the coronavirus pandemic, reads a new report on the city and its real estate scene from RE/MAX. For years, Windsor real estate had been in a rough patch, with a stagnating economy, high unemployment, and many young people abandoning the border town for the glitz and glamour of Toronto.
Lol at the glitz and glamour of Toronto.
Since the early days of the COVID-19, when many families and young professionals ditched their life in major urban centers in favor of small towns and rural communities. The Windsor housing market has been booming without any signs of slowing down. Considering the hot start to 2022, conditions are still in favor of sellers. In other words, Windsor is still a boomtown on the housing front.
Interest Rates …
With interest rates expected to rise, it’s unclear if Windsor (or any other Ontario, the market for that matter) will be able to sustain its uphill growth. This will likely depend on interprovincial migration rates. The Windsor economy is not like that of current housing conditions. For example, the unemployment rate rose 1.2 percent in January, to 8.2 percent, which is slightly below the peak of 8.6 percent reached in May.
Home prices doubled in Ontario and Windsor Prices….
Like other places in Canada, Windsor prices were driven up by out-of-town homebuyers. They had their urban-earned equity which pushed up local housing prices. Buyers who got into the market early on in the pandemic might be sitting pretty on their real estate gains. It might still be too late for others to follow suit and earn equity at quite the same rate. First-time homebuyers and families have been increasingly finding themselves priced out of the broader Canadian real estate market. From coast to coast, rising prices are sidelining Canadians, who are unable to achieve the dream of homeownership.
“Windsor is no different.”
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