The year 2020 left almost every industry reeling from unprecedented change in response to the pandemic. Real estate was especially impacted as buyer demand for more green space and a desire to relocate to regions outside of the GTA, including cottage country, skyrocketed.
“The market was quite feverish throughout the Parry Sound, Muskoka, Haliburton and Orillia,” says Chuck Murney, president of The Lakelands Association of Realtors Board of Directors. “Across all regions, averages went up. The average number of sales rose 21 percent. We saw a 42 percent increase in waterfront properties sales, and the average sale price jumped 27 percent.”
The association represents over 800 realtors® in these four regions – all offer the wide-open spaces, larger properties and access to nature that people were seeking, in most cases only a couple of hours away from the GTA.
In Muskoka the number of waterfront seeds increased by approximately 50 percent between 2019 and 2020. The number of non-waterfront sales rose by approximately 13 percent.
Prices went up significantly well, as even the most casual observer has likely noticed, with waterfront and non-waterfront properties going up by approximately 25 percent and 20 percent, respectively.
Heather Scott, a local realtor who represents the Muskoka region on the Lakelands Association Board of Directors, observed the spike firsthand. “Demand for second homes and cottages in Muskoka skyrocketed in 2020,” she says. “We don’t see this trend changing in 2021. Buyers are making decisions for the future and they want more space, more elbow room, so to speak.”
