THUNDER BAY – The President of Thunder Bay’s real estate board says the sector looks on track to recover fully from a COVID-19 dip by the end of the year.
House sales in June were up 30 per cent from 2019 levels, a rebound that has begun to make up for slow sales over the previous three months, reported Andrew Lawrence.
That included a 20 per cent drop from 2019 in March, 46 per cent in April, and about 54 per cent in May. Lawrence expected pent-up demand to continue to make up that ground over the coming months, expecting end-of-year numbers to look similar to those from 2019.
Lawrence said the resiliency of the sector through the pandemic likely comes down to who has felt the economic pain of COVID-19 – largely low-wage workers who would not have been in the housing market regardless.
“Most people who have a solid job, whether they’re working from home or back into the office – they were always being paid,” he said. “Most industries didn’t shut down completely. Now, there are a lot of industries that did – the restaurant industry is being decimated. For the most part, a lot of the people that work in those industries are students, and they’re not the ones that are buying homes.”
The market for homes in the $180,000 to $320,000 range is particularly brisk at the moment, Lawrence stated, with most receiving multiple offers.
The average selling price for a Thunder Bay house over the past six months is around $258,000.
