Canadian real estate markets are enjoying one of their best summers ever, breaking national records as pent-up demand caused by the spring lockdown and low interest rates have brought buyers back to markets, says Phil Soper, president and CEO of Royal LePage.
“Our people are as busy now as they typically are in an economically healthy May,” says Soper. “It’s like an ocean — we had a small wave in the first quarter and then a big wave through the summer, which we just don’t normally have.”
It’s not the only thing that has changed.
“The people who buy homes now are so different than when I bought my first home and more certainly, when my parents bought their first home,” says Soper. “It used to be if you were single, you rented, and you bought a house when you got married, and married people with young kids were rigid in their buying habits. They liked to sell and buy in the spring and get the kids settled before a new school year starts.
“But the fastest growing demographic of home buyers over the last 15 years has actually been single women and single men and people buying homes as friends, in sort of a collective. So you’ve got all sorts of homeownership trends are de-coupled from the traditional September start of school and this year, 2020, we had such fluid expectations as to what a school year is even going to look like. If most kids in major cities are back in school and a second wave of COVID hits, we’ll all be back at home again.
“The traditional cycles have been all thrown out the window in 2020 and it’s been reflected in the housing market.”
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
