The city’s real estate market breaks new records

House prices in Winnipeg jumped a record 16.3% year over year.
According to a Royal LePage report on Tuesday, this is the biggest increase the real estate company has seen since it started tracking overall prices.
“These records continue to exist,” said Michael Froese, chief broker of Royal LePage Prime Real Estate in Winnipeg.
For the first time ever, an average single-family home costs more than $400,000 — a median of $425,600 — in the city. In the first quarter of 2021, the same type of house had an average price of $382,000.
The average condo in Winnipeg has gone from $225,000 in the first quarter of last year to $243,900 currently, an increase of 8.4%.
“We didn’t expect (buying) to be as intense as in the first quarter,” Froese said.
March set a new record due to the bidding wars: 67% of homes, or more than two-thirds, sold above the list price. That’s a 14% increase from March 2021, according to Royal LePage’s recent report.
Overall, an average home in Winnipeg costs $387,900, up 16.3% from $333,500 in the first quarter of 2021.
“Demand hasn’t gone away and supply can’t keep up,” Froese said. “Real estate is a huge industry, and it’s an industry that doesn’t change overnight…You don’t build a house in a day.”
Material supply chain backlogs and labor issues continue to slow homebuilding progress, said Lanny McInnes, president of the Manitoba Home Builders’ Association.
Before the pandemic, building a single-family home could take nine to 10 months, McInnes said. Now the same place could take over a year to complete.
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Manitobans could stay in rental units longer than they would like due to rising housing prices, he added.
“We need to raise the benchmark for building real affordable housing for our lowest income households,” Distasio said. “The whole notion of what we mean by affordable housing has changed over the past five years to include a wider range of low and moderate incomes.
Manitoba has 33,168 social and affordable housing units, according to a report by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released last November.
Of these, there were 359 vacancies. Only Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Yukon had fewer job vacancies (Nunavut had no data).
The majority of Manitoba’s units — 27,274 — were built between 1970 and 1989. Only 3,608 were built in 1990 or later. A two-bedroom averages $872, according to the November report.

Gabrielle Piche
Journalist
Gabby is a huge fan of people, writing and learning. She graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in the spring of 2020.
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