Malott’s offer was again $100,000 over the asking price, and this time he lost out by an even wider margin to a Toronto buyer.
Between November 2020 and November 2021, despite a global pandemic that hit the border city’s economy particularly hard, average local home prices still jumped 37 per cent, almost the same as the year before, according to the Windsor-Essex County Association of Realtors.
He won’t divulge what he paid for his modest 100-year-old home just south of downtown, but he got a “downpayment gift” from his father, and he’ll move in with two friends.
“Having others live with me, that was part of the economic calculation — having someone else to help pay the bills makes things a whole lot less scary,” said Malott.
“It’s not like 10 years ago when you could find something in Windsor that was move-in ready for $80,000,” said Don Merrifield, who was Malott’s Re/Max Preferred realtor.
Re/Max’s Merrifield, active in the local housing sector the past 22 years, knows about FOMO.
Buying a home is a huge investment, but it’s also an emotional investment, and with interest rates at historic lows, “money’s cheap,” said Merrifield.
Housing prices have become so inflationary that one of the traditional sources for first-time buyers — mature homeowners selling off to either buy up or downscale — has dried up.
Clair College and the University of Windsor in drawing thousands of international students each new semester but then largely relying on the existing stock of private housing to absorb them into the community.
And investors — from abroad, but also from across Ontario and Canada — now represent the biggest segment of buyers in Ontario , and Windsor is among the targets.
16 emergency summit of provincial and municipal leaders hosted by Premier Doug Ford, who wants participants to bring their suggestions on how to address the challenges.
City administration is helping prepare Windsor proposals for the Ford government, said the mayor.
Today’s “typical smaller home” is double that size, and the typical detached home being built and quickly snapped up by most buyers is almost double that size again.
Condos of 1,000 square feet, “the younger generation in their 20s and 30s, they’ve probably willing to accept that.
Ward 3 Coun.
Bortolin recalls homes on the market for $60,000 to $80,000 when he was first elected in 2014.
Especially during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, outside investors scooped up Windsor properties but then left them empty.
“We could easily fit another 50 per cent of our population within the current footprint of the city,” he said.
Smit said when she and her husband were starting out, they lived, worked and grew into a family of four in a 623-square-foot row house in a small British city.
“There’s opportunity, but that opportunity has to come from a shift in how we build, both in scale and where we build,” said Smit.
The development community, he said, is building for the current market, and that means homes above the half-million-dollar range.
Tullio said he could easily see $150,000 being shaved off those half-million-dollar homes by offering smaller lots, smaller building footprints, laminate instead of quartz countertops, carpet instead of hardwood flooring, unfinished basements, no patio/decks.
Tullio, 56, said Windsor has never experienced “this type of hyper-growth” and that there’s now “a huge need” for affordable housing.
That includes “directing density where it makes sense,” he said, like higher density development in the downtown or more of the “missing middle” in the suburbs.
And the city offers incentives, like Community Improvement Program grants, to push for more of the type of growth it wants to see, and is deploying other tools, like relaxation on parking requirements to encourage needed developments.
Jude Malott said he “hadn’t intended to buy a home at these crazy prices,” but he got the push from his current landlord who served him with a dreaded Form N12.
Malott said his 1920-built home has lots of character and good bones.
On Dec.
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