On a gloriously sunny afternoon last week, cottage-country real estate agent Paul Crammond rolled the top down on his convertible and drove off along the curving roads around Lake Muskoka to meet some clients.
In a typical June, Mr. Crammond would be leading the couple on a tour of properties for sale, but in this case the newcomers were already unpacking their china in a 4,500-square-foot cottage with 300 feet of shoreline. The deal for nearly $4-million had been struck a couple of months before.
“It’s been busy since the end of March,” says Mr. Crammond, who is based at Chestnut Park Real Estate Ltd. in Port Carling, Ont. It’s the fastest start to the season he has seen in many years.
Exceptionally warm and sunny spring weather brought spirited sales to the Muskoka region, which includes the big three lakes of Muskoka, Joseph and Rosseau, along with a few of the smaller ones.
“Buying a cottage is so psychological and the weather in April and May was fantastic,” says Mr. Crammond.
His number-crunching shows that 68 waterfront cottages have changed hands in Muskoka since the beginning of the year, compared with 33 by this time in 2009 and 31 in 2008. Thirteen of the 2010 transactions have been valued at more than $2.5-million.
Besides looking for an outing in the warm weather, Mr. Crammond says, clients seem to be in a more ebullient mood after a couple of years of worrying about the economy. Particularly at the high end, he says, prospective buyers who feared that the recession would harm their job or business are now feeling more confident.
“Buyers were holding off until they knew how the economy would affect them,” he says. “We had some pent-up demand for the past few years.”
It’s a different story a little farther north, in Huntsville and Lake of Bays, where Susan Brown of Chestnut Park says the season is off to a sluggish start as everyone awaits the G8 leaders.
She tallied up the sales so far and found 14 this year on Lake of Bays, which is the same number recorded last year at this time. That’s an improvement on 2008, when the number dipped to 11 at mid-June, but a disappointment compared with 2007, when the mark was set at 22.
The impact of the G8 summit taking place in Huntsville, she says, is “huge.”
“People who live here are going away. People who cottage here are not coming.”
She says visitors are worried about encountering road closures and 9-foot steel fences, so many are opting to wait. Some real estate agents, she says, have recently advised sellers to wait until after this week’s summit to list a property for sale.
Still, Ms. Brown says July, August and September could see more sales than usual as a result.
“There is pent-up demand.”
Ms. Brown says the properties she has seen sell this year are perceived as good value. If sellers are hanging onto their expectations for 2007 prices, she cautions, they may have trouble attracting a buyer.
Still, sales have recovered from the worst days of the recession.
“If people say ‘we’re looking for a real bargain,’ they’re too late.”
The longer-term impact of the summit is hard to predict, she says, but the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce has sent out 250 information packages to folks in other countries and that initiative could boost interest in the area, she says.
In Muskoka, Mr. Crammond says listings have increased by about 22 per cent compared with this time last year. If sales continue at such a brisk pace, he says, the area will need more listings to meet demand, though he cautions that the accelerated pace of deal-making in the spring could mean that sales will be softer in later months.
