Younger families buying cottages

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This article was published 25/06/2015 (3778 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Young families are scooping up cottages along the east side of Lake Winnipeg this year, said one veteran real estate agent.

“The market is good,” Judy Calvert-Pierce, of Re/Max Beaches Realty, said in an interview. “There are a lot of young people buying cottages now. More than ever before.”

Calvert-Pierce, who lives year-round in the Belair area, said a warmer spring than last year saw prospective buyers hitting the market a little earlier this year.

A stronger local economy, low mortgage rates and a lower-valued Canadian dollar, which has put a damper on travel outside the country, have also helped.

But the biggest motivator for younger buyers, she said, is a desire to give their children someplace to run around and explore.

“They want to build family memories with their children.”

While she described it as a more active market this year, Calvert-Pierce said it’s not crazy-busy. She estimated a little more than a third of the nearly 300 properties that have come onto the market so far have sold, which is a noticeable improvement from a year ago, when only about one in four were selling.

But while demand is up, Calvert-Pierce said selling prices for the most part are unchanged from last year. She said the median price for a waterfront property is $295,000, and for a non-waterfront cottage it’s $135,000.

“So it’s not a runaway market, it’s not a seller’s market, and it’s not a buyer’s market. It’s just a well-balanced market.”

“Balanced” is how another Re/Max agent — Daphne Shepherd of Re/Max Encore Realty in Teulon, described the market conditions in the resort communities along the west side of Lake Winnipeg.

Calvert-Pierce and Shepherd were reacting to the release of the 2015 Re/Max recreational property report that came out Wednesday.

Shepherd also noted there are more properties for sale this year than last year, and they’re generally taking longer to sell. She said for whatever reason, prospective buyers seem to be more cautious this year. They’re doing their homework and not rushing into anything.

Shepherd thinks some of that caution may be due to the unsettled weather in recent years, including an ice storm a few years ago that pushed big walls of ice onto the shore and damaged some lakefront properties.

“That kind of worried a lot of people,” she said, although she noted it hasn’t prevented lakefront properties from selling.

“You still have your people who want to have that waterfront property. They are still highly desirable properties.”

With more properties from which to choose and sales a little more sluggish, Shepherd said some price discounting is taking place. But in most cases it hasn’t been drastic — maybe in the range of $5,000 to $10,000, she added.

She said prices for seasonal lakefront cottages usually start at $180,000 to $200,000, and for all-season lakefront properties the starting point is about $250,000. For non-lakefront, seasonal cottages, the average price is between $80,000 and $100,000.

While it’s mainly young families buying cottages on the east side of the lake, along with some older buyers looking to retire out there, Shepherd said baby boomers are the most dominant market force on the west side.

She said many of them are at that stage in their life where “they’ve got a little bit of fun money, and they’re looking for a place to retreat to on the weekend” and to possibly live in once they retire.

“There are also a lot of trans-generational transfers of family cottages going on,” she added.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca