31 - Barrie Advance - Thursday JUNE 9, 2016
RED HOT MARKET
Barrie’s real estate market
draws GTA, international buyers
JENNI DUNNING
[email protected]
Aleksandra and Marek Krupa moved to Barrie from Brampton, in large part, because prices are lower here. JENNI DUNNING PHOTO
EXPERT OPINION
Mark Faris, CMO & broker
of Royal LePage First
Contact Realty The Faris Team
Brokerage, said homebuyers
can expect to pay at least
$5,000 to $10,000 above the
asking price and potentially
face a bidding war.
seeking more affordable housing
options, said Mark Faris, CMO
and broker of Royal LePage First
Contact Realty The Faris Team
Brokerage.
Anyone seeking to buy a house
in the Barrie area, for example,
can expect to pay at least $5,000 to
$10,000 over the asking price and
potentially face bidding wars on
multiple homes before making a
deal, he said.
“The higher-end market is seeing movement … and there’s a
whole lot more confidence in the
entry market. That’s where you
see bidding wars,” he said. “Typically now, the list price is where
you start. I’ve seen anywhere from
$20,000, $30,000, even $40,000
over list.”
For the past 10 years, Faris said, it
took local agents an average of four
months to sell four months’ worth
of inventory. In the past year, that
changed to less than two months to
sell the same number of units.
“If you’re comparing homes to
2015, it’s not the same market. Even
(compared to) January (2016).”
In Barrie, the average price is
now $275,000 to $350,000 for a
townhouse, $425,000 for a three-
bedroom,
two-and-a-half-bathroom detached home and $600,000
to millions for an estate home on
the water, Faris said.
Areas such as Vaughan are becoming pricier, so many people are
looking north, he said.
“Newmarket prices, Bradford
prices are starting to get to a level
that Barrie is seen as affordable,”
Faris said. “There’s a perspective change (among) people living
south of here that Barrie is a cool
place to be.”
In April, Barrie’s housing market tied with Toronto for having
the third-highest year-over-year
price increase in Canada, according to a recent Re/Max survey
by Leger, a market research firm.
Housing prices jumped 14 per
cent in the Barrie and District area
and in Toronto during the first
quarter this year, behind Fraser
Valley and Greater Vancouver in
B.C.
See LOW, Page 33
SIMCOE.COM
Between a “rundown shack”
for $700,000 in Toronto or a twostorey home with modern finishings in Barrie, the choice was
easy for Aleksandra and Marek
Krupa.
The former Brampton couple
moved to Barrie in December
– part of a wave of homebuyers fleeing north from the Greater
Toronto Area’s higher housing
prices.
The Krupas say many of their
friends in their 30s are getting married and want to buy houses, but
options can be limited if their bank
accounts are not bulging.
“Some of them have bought condos that cost more than our house,”
said Aleksandra.
“For $600,000, $700,000, they’d
get basically a rundown shack,”
added Marek. “There’s still a
mental block about Barrie. I don’t
know why. Once they start having
kids, that little one-bedroom condo
won’t be so nice.”
The Krupas have friends and
family members who also recently
moved to Barrie because the homes
are less expensive, bigger and newer than many of those available in
the GTA.
And with their first child due in
September, Barrie also offers more
nature and outdoor living for the
couple’s active lifestyle.
They both work from home, so
commuting is not a problem, but
Hwy. 400 makes the GTA easily
accessible.
“(Friends) say, ‘Barrie is so far.’
Then they say, ‘Oh, how much do
you say houses are?’ once they
see the price in Woodbridge and
Maple,” Marek said. “The new
house gave us everything we
wanted.”
But buying your dream home
in Barrie and parts of Simcoe
County is not as easy as it once
was, partly because of competition from buyers leaving the GTA
● Red, from Page 31
“The ripple effect on the housing markets
outside of Toronto and Vancouver is quite
significant when you look at the Canadian
housing market overall,” said Elton Ash, RE/
MAX of Western Canada’s regional executive vice-president.
The markets in Vancouver and Toronto
created competition among buyers and potentially discouraged sellers from listing
their properties, he said. That led to a lower
inventory, which may have impacted the
numbers.
The same thing is happening here, according to Barrie and District Association of Realtors president Michael Douglas.
“Sometimes buyers are having to bid on
four or five homes before they get one,” he
said. “It’s never been like this in Barrie, as
far as my recollection goes. The bottom line
is, there an imbalance between the inventory and the number of buyers.”
He said sellers love the market right now,
but buyers are having a tough time finding
homes in their price range.
According to the survey, the Barrie and
District area saw the selling price of the average home jump from $352,124 in 2015 to
$401,801 this year.
“The interest rates are quite low, which
means people can afford reasonable mortgages,” Douglas said. “But there’s not
enough properties for sale to accommodate
that many buyers.”
Douglas said the market should eventually
balance out, but he isn’t sure when that will
happen.
Along with new buyers from the GTA and
lower inventory and interest rates, the low
Canadian dollar is also attracting international buyers, with more people from Europe
and China snapping up Barrie-area properties, said Faris.
This means greater competition for buyers
and for real estate agents, who are increasingly expanding marketing strategies and using online tools to showcase homes, he said.
“Gone are the days you take a shot of the
house and stick it up online. You can’t just
stick a sign on your lawn and expect maximum dollar,” he said, adding tools such as
3D tours, videos and live chats with real estate agents are being used.
“(Barrie has) been a market that hasn’t seen
the kind of increases our southern brothers
have recorded. Now, it’s starting to see increases,” Faris said.
“Barrie deserves it.”
MAY 2016 AVERAGE SELLING PRICES
BARRIE
Detached: $459,132
Townhouse, Link and Semi: $322,184
Condominium: $253,411
ESSA TOWNSHIP
Detached: $505,585
INNISFIL
Detached: $494,397
ORO-MEDONTE TOWNSHIP
Detached: $630,115
SPRINGWATER TOWNSHIP
Detached: $593,436
Source: Barrie & District Association of Realtors
33 - Barrie Advance - Thursday JUNE 9, 2016
Low dollar attracts investors to Barrie