The May long weekend is the traditional kickoff to cottage season. But long before the snow melted this spring, equity-rich baby boomers from the city had been turning up the heat on resort-area real estate.Agents in Muskoka and Haliburton say most of the action is down to a new breed of older buyer: 50-somethings, cashing out and driving north to retire or telecommute. Many maintain a condo in the GTA or they go south in the winter.Toronto’s runaway real estate market, which has only recently started to cool, is still radiating heat into cottage country, according to Mike Taylor, an agent with Port Carling Chestnut Park and president of the Lakelands Association of Realtors, which represents 680 realtors in Muskoka, Haliburton and Orillia.Its latest statistics show waterfront property sales up 5.1 per cent this year to date, compared with 2016. The value of that property, however, surged 51.4 per cent year over year in April, to $118.1 million. The median price of $485,000 was up 30.4 per cent from last April.“We haven’t seen a slowdown like the Toronto market has over the last month as yet, but it may be filtering our way. As the end of May comes and we are getting more listings put on the market for waterfront, it will be interesting to see how that all plays out,” Taylor said. But many cottages never hit the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) that provides real estate association data. A lot of agents find a buyer and seller before the property even goes on the market, said Bob Clarke, a Port Carling-based broker.He said the inventory of listings is at historic lows — down about 30 per cent from 2015 levels. Prices, however, are up about 26 per cent on the small lakes and about 41 per cent on the big three lakes: Muskoka, Joseph and Rosseau.Typically, Muskoka doesn’t see a lot of bidding wars and vacation homes can sometimes take up to two years to sell. But Clarke said competitive offers have been popping up since the f ...
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