2020 Guelph Real Estate Review, Part 1

We will never forget 2020. The year of the pandemic brought many new experiences. When Ontario issued the State of Emergency on March 17th, real estate was considered an essential service. This was to ensure that if people had already sold their property, they could buy a new one and not be homeless. And if you had bought a house, you were allowed to sell to ensure you wouldn’t end up with 2 properties. Realtors quickly put together protocols to protect all involved from contracting COVID-19, including masks, social distancing, hand sanitization, disposable gloves, and sanitizing wipes.  Consequently, the market continued on a limited basis and still as a seller’s market.  Move forward approximately 3 months and restrictions loosened, though sanitization processes did not, and Guelph moved into an even busier seller’s market, which continued for the year. With continued high demand and low supply, 10 months later we are still in a hot seller’s market.

Another effect on our real estate market was that many companies were forced to adopt a work-from-home strategy and after several months, many large companies, like Shopify, shifted employees to work from home permanently. This allowed many Torontonians to move to less expensive markets and embrace larger housing and bigger lots. As a result, we’ve seen a large influx of Torontonian to Guelph. With our proximity to Toronto, even if they end up having to go into the big city once or twice a week after restrictions are lifted, our GO train and bus will easily support that.

The end result for 2020? There was only 8.1% less homes sold in 2020 than 2019 and if you are lucky enough to own real estate in Guelph, your home or investment’s median sales price went up 16.1%! Once again, your real estate is your best investment. In my next blog, I’ll drill down into the three different types of housing and how their sales and values played out in Guelph.

2020 Guelph real-estate stats compared to 2019