MANAGING CHANGE

Understatement of the Year: COVID-19 has had a major impact on life in Guelph and our local real estate market.

There have been a number of surprises over the past 6 months since the pandemic landed here.  The most obvious surprise to me has been the real estate market. Like everyone in March and April, we had no idea how long this would last, and by all appearances the pandemic was going to wreak havoc with the real estate market. And so it did, but not in the way we expected.

The effect that COVID-19 has brought on our real estate market has manifested in the driving business to heights and extremes we hadn’t seen since the Spring of 2017.  Massive bidding wars, listing shortages, and a large jump in sales prices.  We’ve talked about these events multiple times, and we won’t go there this week.

 

One of the more profound changes we’ve noticed is the number of “outside” buyers and agents coming into the local market, including north of Guelph, Fergus and Elora.  Over the last 3 years, the number of buyers from the GTA had been settling under 10% of the buyer pool. There wasn’t enough of a price spread to entice buyers to leave the GTA and make a close-to-lateral move to Guelph. 

COVID-19, social distancing, and the awareness of densely-populated GTA neighbourhoods have changed the way many homeowners, first-time buyers, and experienced homebuyers view the Guelph and Wellington County market.  Families living in condos and densely-packed townhouse developments struggled to utilize their space to deal with working and schooling from home and the effects of social lockdown. Other homeowners, sensing that market conditions will eventually swing away from the current peak levels are choosing to “cash” out of the GTA market and be able to live either mortgage free or nearly mortgage free in the Wellington County market.

Remote work arrangements – and the fact that this pandemic has legs – have demonstrated to homeowners and buyers the need for more flexibility and space in their living arrangements.  Home offices are one of the biggest search terms we’ve been seeing on our sites over the past few months.  Being able to work remotely also means not having to do the commute into the GTA daily.  Buyers are no longer making proximity to the 401 or GoTransit the top items on their lists.

Our brokerage recently started working with a custom home builder in Drayton, which is a 40 minute drive to Guelph and even less to the KW area.   A lot of the traffic to this subdivision is coming from the GTA and Guelph area.  The price point is certainly attractive, and with 50 to 80 foot lot frontage, the density of the GTA won’t be missed.  These new homes often include main floor or second floor office space for the newest trend of working from home.

It appears that families are quickly pivoting to a simpler lifestyle that allows them to manage COVID-19 challenges a lot easier than in the metropolitan area.  

One aspect of real estate that I’ve appreciated over the years – and I’ve used this illustration time and time again – is that the real estate market is a living and breathing thing, constantly changing and evolving to meet the needs of buyers.  In the long term, 2020 will be but a blip in the real estate market graphs, but look closely and you’ll see the pivot point when people went from making decisions out of fear and became proactive in making the best real estate choices for their circumstances.

On the topic of pivoting and managing change, we’ve heard from a number of our readers and subscribers over the past week about the changes we have made to the sales reports.

Just to clarify, these are not changes that we have done voluntarily.  Some of our bigger competitors have noticed the traction we have with this site, and have objected to how we report the sales data.  We have made some temporary changes to the site and are currently working on permanent changes that will allow us to share even more data with you.  Our goal is to provide you with a platform that will allow you to search and view recent sales in our region as part or your real estate experience with our brokerage and team.

This new Virtual Office Website (VOW is the term) will be up and running in the next 30-45 days.  This site will be accessible to registered users and will be password protected in order to comply with privacy laws and advertising regulations.

As of today, we have reverted to the original city and neighbourhood sales reports, and to comply with privacy rules, we’ve password-protected the webpage.  As a subscriber, you will find the password to the sales reports in the email. We appreciate that this is not the ideal solution for you, our subscribers, and we are committed to getting comprehensive sales data to you in a manner that is convenient and of high quality.  The silver-lining to this speed bump is that we’ll be bringing you a platform to view the sales data in a way that is customizable to your needs and accessible 24/7. Stick with us and I’m certain you will be pleased with the ultimate outcome. 

LAST WEEK IN THE GUELPH REAL ESTATE MARKET:

This past week in the Guelph real estate market, we are reporting 39 homes were sold, with the median home being a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 1,583 square foot home.  That home sold for $563,990, or $372,72/sqft, and took 13 days to sell firm.  Homeowners achieved 100.02% of their list price.  72% of homes sold (that’s 28 of the 39) went at or above list price.

Thank you for reading and for your support.  

As always, if you want specific sales data or additional information on anything real estate-related in our region, reach out to me and our team will be happy to assist you.  

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Saturday, September 12th
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