Realtors in rural Nova Scotia are adjusting quickly to a new way of selling houses as buyers from places like Ontario and B.C. snap up properties without seeing them in person.
Christopher Snarby, the co-owner of Exit Realty Inter Lake, sells properties from Chester to Queens County and estimates he’s sold 12-15 of them sight unseen since May.
“People have been desperate and they can’t get here to see it, and they know things are moving quickly so they just kind of have to make a choice,” Snarby told CBC’s Information Morning on Monday.
“And not everybody’s comfortable with it, but certainly I’ve had a number that have been.”
He admits selling a property virtually can be a challenge.
“It’s hard to describe a smell or feel of a house, but it really does become our responsibility to try to convey as much information as we can,” Snarby said.
Bobbi Maxwell said half of her buyers right now are from outside the province and won’t see their houses in person until they arrive. Most are middle-aged people who can work from home and are looking for a place to retire at some point.
“We’re starting to see more people … migrate this way because they want the solitude, the peace, the quiet, the safety and the beauty of the beaches,” said Maxwell, a realtor with Viewpoint Realty Services who sells properties around Barrington and Clyde River in Shelburne County.
“We’re not as hot as the metro [market], but it’s definitely been one crazy market for us as well.”
Record October across N.S.
The Nova Scotia Association of Realtors compiled data for the month of October that shows 1,427 units were sold across the province, up more than 30 per cent from October 2019.
The average sale price was a record $304,590, rising just over 21 per cent from the previous October.
In Yarmouth, there were 24 residential sales in October, up 41 per cent from last year and in the Annapolis Valley, 203 properties were sold, up 30 per cent since last October. The average sale price also went up in both areas last month.
Christopher Snarby, co-owner Exit Realty Interlake, said people are moving to communities on the South Shore for the relative affordability, friendliness and proximity to the ocean. (Robert Short/CBC)
On the South Shore where Snarby works, sales in October were up about 30 per cent from last year and the average residential price was just over $291,000, an increase of 36 per cent over last October.
“We’re not usually accustomed to that many bidding wars in our area, but now … most properties have gone into at least two or three offers and the time frames are a lot quicker as well,” Snarby said.
In the past, houses would sit on the market for six months to a year and now they’re gone in weeks or days, he added.
Rural internet still a challenge
Even though people are eager to move to Nova Scotia for its friendliness and relative affordability, Snarby and Maxwell said they are routinely asked about internet service.
“It’s really funny because people are more concerned about the internet than they are health-care services,” Maxwell said.
She said newcomers are good news for rural areas like Shelburne County that have struggled with out-migration.
Bobbi Maxwell hopes the tide is turning for communities like Shelburne, which have seen an out-migration of residents in recent years. (Robert Short/CBC)
But she said there could be challenges, too.
Many new buyers say they eventually want to build their own homes but finding skilled labour in the area isn’t always easy, she said.
“I think we’re going to have a lot of growing pains because with the demand, we’re very short on tradesmen like plumbers and electricians and carpenters,” Maxwell said.
“I really am hoping that a lot of the people who are moving here from away are bringing in new skills or new motivation to want to … become career oriented or focused and become tradesmen in our area.”
Snarby said some of his clients are selling homes in the $800,000 range in Ontario and buying a property in rural Nova Scotia for around $200,000, leaving a healthy amount for their retirement fund.
“And at the end of the day, if they’re not comfortable with their house or if it’s not quite the right one, they can put it back on the market and there’s a good chance it’ll sell,” Snarby said.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
