The Canadian Press
Lexi McKennaโs day now includes breaks to help her mother-in-law plant vegetables,ย whichย wasnโt possible when she was running her wedding business at breakneck speed out of her Toronto studio.
McKenna and husband Jeff Richards had been intrigued for years by a slower-paced life outside of the city. But it wasnโt until COVID-19 brought their respective businesses โย Richards isย a chef โ to a halt that the two moved from Toronto to the town of Grand Valley to live with his parents.
They might never come back.
โWeโve kind of fallen in love with this small-town vibe,โย McKenna said.ย โItโs a really lovely community. Thereโs a nice sense of security, andย then honestly, the pace of life โย Iโm still getting work done here, but I just donโt have this sense of urgency in everything I do that I do whenย Iโm in Toronto.โ
Since theย global pandemic first forced Canadians into their homes in late-March, our housesย have becomeย our offices, our schools and our recreation centres.ย And weย suddenly see our homesโ shortcomings, andย crave more beautiful scenery and space to roam.
That allure, along with the high cost of city living, and the new knowledge that many Canadians can work from home, has more people shopping for homes outside the city.
โIn the last 10 days,ย we have seen an overwhelming migration of people up here,โ Chris Keleher, a Royal LePage realtor who specializes in Collingwood and The Blue Mountains,ย said on Friday.
โThe increase in buyer activity has been massive, and 95 per cent of the buyers my team is working with are families where the pandemic has finally been the straw that broke the camelโs back, and they are moving out of the city.โ
Keleherโs clients Renee and Francis Tanaka are shopping in Collingwood, a virtual playground on the southern part of Georgian Bay with beaches, forests and Blue Mountain ski resort. Renee, who is a maternal support practitioner and Francis, a technical sales representative, want to be closer to family, plus provide more space for their two sons, aged three and six, to play.
โItโs funny, because when we wereย upย (in theย Collingwood area)ย in the summer, our thought was always like:ย could we actually live up here?โ Francis said.
โAnd theย lifestyle outside of the city is much more appealing to us,โ Renee added.ย โWe have two active boys who are continuously wanting to play in nature. We are an active family, so by moving somewhere up north like Collingwood, we can ski, we can bike, we can hike, we have all of these things at our fingertips. We also can get more green space for our dollar.โ
Royal LePage CEO Phil Soper said online viewership of Ontario listings outside of Torontoย โ in โexurbanโ regions โ are on theย rise.
Royal LePage numbers show Vaughan, just north of Toronto, saw an 83 per cent jump in May over the same time last year. Peterborough and Lindsay were up 56 per cent, and Kitchener and Cambridgeย saw an increase of 53 per cent.
Soper said the real estate market was already trending in this direction, driven both by the 5,000 baby boomers that retire each week, and millennialsโ desireย for better housing bang for their buck.
โForever people have thought โWouldnโt it be lovely to live in the country with all its accoutrements, with the rush ofย the city behind us?’โ Soper said. โSo fast forward to now, I think what weโre seeing is an acceleration of a trend thatย had already began.โ
In some cases, such as McKenna and Richards who couldย no longer afford their $2,300-a-month Parkdale apartment, moving was a financial necessity.
โOnce COVID happened, itย became a very fast, downward sort of spiral in terms of Jeff was the chef of a great restaurant in Toronto and they were laying everyone off so he was out of work. . . And thenย I work in weddings, and the wedding season for 2020 is essentially becoming non-existent,โ said McKenna, who co-owns Paper & Poste, which specializes in wedding stationery.
โJust two really unlucky industries to be a part of as a couple.โ
McKenna said Richards had been โover Toronto for awhileโ because ofย big-city inconveniencesย such as lack of parking.
She was more worried they would miss the perks of downtown living.
โButย then as soon as it became something we had to do just to survive financially, first of all, I was kind of happy that the choice was taken away from me.
โI was like, this is just what we have to do now. Iโve really loved it since weโve been up here.โ
McKenna said they might eventually move closer to Toronto again, and that Hamilton is an option. But the longer theyโreย in Grand Valley, she said, โthe better we feel.โ
โSometimes people just need the right reason or the right motivation to do something theyโve always wanted to do,โ Keleher said. โNow they have it.โ
Home Group Realtyโs John Gaida moved to Erin, Ont., from theย GTAย withย his wife in 2011. They live on a permaculture farm with a food forest, pigs and chickens on three acres of land.
Gaida, whoโs helped people from the GTA findย homesย inย the Guelph area for years,ย said heโs seen a bump in business since March.
โIโm swamped,โ Gaida said.
Buyersโ search criteria has changed dramatically.
โWhere Iโve noticed it the most is the desirability of certain areas โย houses that typically would have been deemed really desirable because letโs say they were close to the highway for commuters to jump on and off. Now people are like, โOur officesย have saidย we are not coming back, so if weโre going to be working from home, I want a property that I can actually enjoy versus just settling on this one because itโs in a good location.’โ
Gaida, who knew nothing about running a permaculture farm before he and his wife moved to Erin,ย added thatย the internet alleviates some of the fear of moving out of the city.
โMan, YouTube is amazing. Everything Iโve learned out on the rural property is like, โscrew it, Iโll watch a YouTube video and Iโll figure out how to kill a chicken,โ or whatever it is. Itโs really interesting how having the available resources to have the knowledge there takes away the fear factor of actually potentially making a move. The mentality, has really shifted, people have a much higher threshold for new things and new adventures.โ