The price of home ownership is climbing out of reach for more and more people in the Kingston area.
Local real estate agents say the average price of a house has increased more than 40 per cent over the last year alone — the highest increase in the country.
The average price of a single detached house now stands at $780,000.
According to the Royal LePage house price survey, a detached, single-family home in the Kingston region will cost 44 per cent more than it would have just one year ago.
“That is the fastest growing, in percentage, across Canada,” says Matt Lee, a broker at Royal LePage.
It’s a sellers market in the Kingston region, and the demand for homes has never been higher.
Lee says 30-50 per cent of buyers are from outside of Kingston, like the Greater Toronto Area and Ottawa.
“People are looking at that and saying, ‘If I can work remotely, why wouldn’t I go to Kingston?’ So we are seeing that and we are seeing people come from out of town.”
With so many buyers coming from outside the city, it means houses are being sold faster.
On average, Lee says homes are for sale in Kingston for just eight days, have multiple offers, and sell over asking a lot of the time with no conditions.
“I think there is an ability to get a home, but it is tough just because of the shortage,” says Lee.
“This all comes down to supply and demand.”
Real estate agent Holly Henderson says new construction can’t keep up with the demand either.
She says new builds sell just as quickly as resale homes, and for multiple offers as well.
“We hold off offers for a particular period of time, and offers get presented and the houses sell for over the builders offer price all the time,” says Henderson, a listing agent for Greene Homes.
She also says many buyers of new builds are investors from outside the Kingston region.
Henderson is getting ready to release a batch of new builds for sale in the coming weeks.
“We’ll be starting at $850,000-$870,000, and 52-foot lots will be well over $1 million,” she adds.
Henderson says one home that was sold was only lived in for less than a year, and sold for $300,000 more than it was purchased for.
Lee says the Kingston real estate market is showing no sign of slowing down, and unless we see a large number of houses get listed or built, the housing shortage will continue.
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