The cooling that has recently wafted across Toronto-area home sales isn’t expected to make its way to cottage country this summer, according to a recreational property report from Royal LePage.Sales and prices are up in many Ontario resort areas and will likely stay that way, because a cottage buyer tends to be have a higher net worth than a consumer shopping for a primary residence, said Royal LePage Real Estate Services CEO Kevin Somers.“They’re less reactive to changes in the primary residential markets but just as responsive to the forces of supply and demand,” Somers said on Monday.The company’s annual Recreational Housing Report is based on a May survey of 51 Canadian agents and brokers, 63 per cent of whom reported an uptick in prices and sales this spring.That trend is expected to hold because inventory is tight and the consumers who are shopping aren’t first-time buyers, but rather homeowners who are investing their equity in vacation properties, said Somers.The report puts the average Ontario cottage price at $413,000. That is an aggregate of all categories ranging from resort condos to waterfront spots on lakes, rivers and islands to wooded areas with no water access.But Somers says there is a huge variation of vacation property prices.In Ontario, Muskoka is still the costliest place to buy a cottage, with an average price this spring of $1.5 million.Property within a two- or three-hour drive of the Toronto area is the most popular, says the report.While 60 per cent of survey respondents said those in the 36- to 51-year-old age group were the predominant buyers, 40 per cent said baby boomers aged 52 to 70 per cent comprised the largest group of buyers.Foreign buyers account for 5 per cent or less of vacation home purchasers, said 77 per cent of those surveyed.While prices were also up in Kawartha Lakes, Meaford, Thornbury, Collingwood and Niagara-on-the-Lake, areas such as Southwestern Ontario, St. Joseph Isla ...
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