Despite a slowing property market in some areas and further expected interest rate increases the demand for real estate investment properties outside of the GTA continues to be strong.
Is that the case in London? Where are the opportunities for reasonable house prices and cash-flowing rental markets?
Join us for the next stop on our virtual tour of Ontario markets with expert insights and market updates for London from Georgia Tusch of Tusch Real Estate Group.
Daniel: We're going to talk to this lady, Georgia. I am not going to try to pronounce the last name cause I will probably mess it up. Hi Georgia, what I hear when people talk about you is that you're determined, you're unshakeable and you're dedicated. I know you're dedicated to the profession. You're an EXP realtor, a colleague of mine. You're dedicated to the industry and you're dedicated to your clients. You always want to make sure that every deal you are involved in is a win-win for everybody involved. That's what I hear about you all the time.
Georgia: Thank you. Yes, a little background. I've been doing real estate, I think 11 years now. I got in really young. My dad put me in when I was in high school, I was doing some exams. He's been doing it for about 40 years. I don't even know now. I have learned how to sell farms. Farms are one of my specialties, the country specialists.
Now, we've grown into quite a large team across London. The last name is Tusch. We got to roll with that. We have a large team here and we do every type of property. Coming in with the knowledge from country to city. It's been great for me to know every market share here, coming into the market, especially with the spikes that we've been seeing.
I only got about a little bit of time here that I was available to put something together. It's not very pretty, but I like to read off something while I'm talking to you guys, just to make sure I got my numbers. If you're not familiar with London, London is the London St. Thomas Real Estate Board. London is situated right beside another major city, not quite as big as St. Thomas. I do want to touch on that a little bit today because it's really important because there's a lot of development going on there. That's what that means, London and St. Thomas Real Estate Board.
Our monthly updates, the real estate board. This is major news. It's the first time in a very long time. The average home price actually saw a dip. I know Kory was mentioning before that they saw that typically in their prior in March, but we haven't seen that for a very long time. Our market has just shot up just from January to now is probably better steady, 30% increase. I sold properties in September for $950,000. Some people have not even moved in and flip it from Toronto for $1.3 M.
This has been very difficult for sellers that may be sold early and didn't see this. The market is doing this and for investors coming in from the Toronto area, making some pretty crazy amounts of substantial income for a very short period of time. Some of these numbers here, in February, London's home average was $823,000. I think Kory said his grown up was around six or maybe touched on seven there.
This is in March, the first time we see roughly about a 20,000 price drop. I could tell you right now, we have seen a lot of people slow down coming from Toronto. This is what's really happened. I really state our market progress cause I like to look at Toronto and kitchener. Those are two larger major cities right up the stream from us. When they start dipping, we're usually three or four months behind them. When they start going out, we're three or four months behind them again.
I had a lot of EXP agents that are on my downline that I work with every day that are in Kitchener and Toronto. They told me in January, they started seeing this happening prices, sitting houses, sitting, not going to offer a date. This is the first week I have seen those not only about an hour ago. I didn't get offers on my listing where we should have got offers. If anything, they were way under them where the market value is that, two weeks ago.
As things come up, they come down, I'm expecting, we're going to see a much more balanced market. What could I say? The blood's in the water right now and buyers are really getting some opportunities. They haven't had an opportunity to read for probably two and a half years to really go in on a bidding on a property that does it have 20 offers.
Three weeks ago we bid on something and I had 45 offers. Depending on where you are in this market, if you're under 700, it's still a zoo. I have been bidding wars on properties over 2 million, pushing them up 550,000. It's really crazy. It's pockets here and there, but what my prediction for the market right now is we're getting a slow amount of buyers coming down from the Toronto area. They're pushing back their way. They're not seeing the investment opportunities here with the interest hikes coming in, inflation, going up.
A lot of people are cashing out of Ontario. I can't tell you almost, I would say 45% of the deals I've been doing with my sellers. I do a lot of listings. Majority are moving up North, out East and out West. Moving out west was a big thing for years. Never moving up North. Selling everything they have and moving up North. It's actually crazy. We're seeing a really big influx in inventory. I think it's led up to the point where people for three years have watched their properties creep up 50% to triple their amount that I mean in three years and now they're going, oh, I have this big house, my dream was always to retire. Now let's buy a place up north and buy a place in Florida during the winter.
The boomers are really seeing this and that's where we're seeing some crazy inventory. Just last month didn't we just go to these stats here. I want to make sure I get it right. This is another one for a really good one for people that don't know London that well. London has seen a lot of buyers. Like we have seen from the Toronto area, overseas investors in millennials. However, the fact is that London is statistically the fastest growing city in Ontario and the fourth fastest in Canada.
Everyone hears about all these huge cities in Vancouver, BC, and Calgary, but London has really come on the map and it is growing exponentially. It's really quite crazy. It's very low, it's a very attractive location on the map for many, because we're 40 minutes from Sarnia from the border there, we got the two great lakes, in between us about 20 minutes or 40 minutes sometimes to both of those.
With people being able to work from home a lot more, they're able to drive from Toronto, maybe only having to go to the office twice a week, and their families can own a huge house here compared to Toronto and a single family with a large yard. That's where a lot of our properties got eaten up. Being able to work from home. I think a lot of major cities have felt bad as well, but mainly from Toronto because they don't have to live in the city so much. They can really only travel, twice a week and then live here and their wife's gonna live here and get jobs here. We really got taken over because our properties are so cheap compared to anything even near there.
This makes March the highest number of listings in history of our London Real Estate Board. This is a really important fact, never in history as March came across that we've had this number of lists. That's where we're starting to see those depths. We're not sure where this is going to go, to be honest. It could dry up very quickly because the amount of buyers in Sarnia isn't experiencing the dip. I don't think that we're feeling, obviously our prices are crazy saturated.
This is a pretty big thing. I have a couple of listings sitting on the market right now. This would have never happened, three weeks ago. This influx, it's the spring. We usually have this many more listings coming on. This hasn't happened for a couple of years for us. I am hoping this comes into a more balanced market because the buyer's fatigue from going in for two years, trying to purchase a property at a reasonable price.
I've gotten beat out and every month they get beat out. There were 10 grand, less on their budget because the houses were rising so quickly. In March stats, there were 1,049 homes sold with 1,544 new listings. There are quite a few more listings sitting in the market. 10 day rolling average. They're going past that. Single family average for the whole of London is usually closer to $900,000. Condos are $692,000 on average and apartments are $501,000 huge jumps.
Kory was perhaps a millionaire. I'm seeing them going up to a million in areas where this would never happen, even six months ago. The average home I have advice on in the London, Ontario region has more than tripled in value and the last quarter century tripled. They can't hang onto these properties anymore. They're just going ye hot , cashing out and going. I just listed today, a property that hasn't been on the market for 68 years.
Here's a good idea for an investor. This property is in Oak Ridge. One of the most sought after double neighborhoods in London. Beautiful, mature streets, very quiet all around the schools. This house hasn't had a thing done to it since 60 years ago, I'm talking, it has metal cabinets. I didn't even know that was a thing anymore. They're going to get over $800,000 for it. Thousand for it, but you know what? You have to think bigger when buying in London that property is going to be easily worth 1.2, probably in a couple years with a little bit of lipstick on it. Like a little makeup, it's going to look good.
I'm talking about rent. There's nowhere to rent. There's apps. I almost had a couple right now buy a property off me because their house isn't getting built and finished till November. They have no place to rent. They're doing Airbnb and they would rather buy a property and then pay the Airbnb prices cause there is nothing to rent and I'm talking, not just London in the core, but on the outer edges, the smaller towns around us, nothing. The right rent prices are just going crazy.
Another big thing that's happened and we have a lot of multifamily that's coming up in and the reason I think this is happening because I've sold a bunch of multi-family is their rents right now are not, they've been in their renters have been there.
Steadily for 5 to 10 years, they haven't been able to raise them quick enough for them to be able to pay for the property taxes that are going to be coming up, the interest rates that are going to be coming up and the hassle they've been having to deal with this. They're cashing out a lot of their investment properties because they just can't get the rent out of the people that have been there for so long. That's a really interesting sector that's happening right now that you're going to see if you search on MLS, triplexes, duplexes and really desirable areas that will only go up in value.
Daniel: Wow, 1,544 new listings. That's 50 new listings per day.
Georgia: We had 94 the other day. It was remarkable that happened because we've been living with no inventory for so long. It's been really challenging. Another crazy factor is that one third of our real estate deals in this last year were done by out-of-town agents. That's never happened before. Toronto agents at the market, so saturated there, no one can get their buyers and properties to bring them down here, bringing their own, and then doing the deals here.
They're listing all the homes here and it's just been wild. One thing I know though, for a fact of a lot of the people that bought in London from Brantford area and certain things like that to a huge part of people moving down here. I'm all moving to Windsor. It's kinda crazy because anything along the corridor there, the 401 is getting bought up like insane because they need a jet back and see the majority of their family.
Areas in London that are really good to be purchasing in is East London has shot up crazy, but it's the closest one to that end the town that gets you quicker to Toronto. That's where a lot of people that have bought in this area want to be because they want to be able to get home to their family 20 minutes quicker than they would, living on the North end St. Thomas. I want to touch on that quickly.
St. Thomas is getting this massive Amazon plant. There's going to be thousands and thousands of jobs. Its market has shot up. It's cut, it used to be very low. It had the Ford plant there for years at a couple of, I don't know, 10 years ago, at least. You're getting houses for next to nothing. The town got really rough now it's completely getting bought up and cleaned up.
The beautiful thing about St. Thomas is the prices are still reasonable. The rents are good because there aren't enough of them. It's right near Port Stanley, which is a huge little area that is our port. That's one of our main beaches around here. That is going crazy right now. A lot of retirees are living close to that way. It's a central place with a lot of workflow that's going to be going in there soon.
Daniel: I have two quick questions for you, Georgia. Number one, are there a lot of pre-construction developments in the pre-construction phase or announced or whatever anywhere in London?
Georgia: There are so many applications going in right now for your future developments. I think our London, Munis valley is absolutely swamped with it. My friend works there and he lets me know how many are going in. Everything that's pre-construction is sold months before it even gets to anywhere that you can purchase right now. But one thing that is really that is happening.
Majority as major construction sites are going in around the little cities and little towns around the outer cities. I started around London right now. I'm talking, I've got 15, lots for sale out near a little town. What you would never even drive through before, but people are stretching out that distance. Even just buying the lots and holding on to them until the rest of them are sold. They've been going up immensely or are purchasing a couple of them and building some new single families there. Because people can work further from London.
People can work from home. The only thing I will say on the opposite end here with what's happening in our economy and our world and inflation, that gets me a little nervous about buying too far out of town is the fact that gas prices and all these things are creeping up. That's going to make a major effect for people that are working from that far from the city.
There's a lot of projects and a lot of land that is expanding. It's just that I think London is just so in depth, they're so desperate right now for new homes. It's going to be a year or two before those prices start to settle and you can actually get into these because the waiting lists are so long and the demand is so high.
Daniel: Just a minute ago, you mentioned that a little town where something's happening, that you'd never thought would happen. What's the name of the little town?
Georgia: There's little towns. Actually it's in between Sarnia and London. There's places called Bothwell, Springs, these little areas are getting these subdivisions that are getting put in Glencoe. You've probably never heard of Glencoe. These are little towns, they have grocery stores, gas stations and they are growing. Homes that were the average there 300,000 to 400,000 are now going to 600,000 or 700,000 the new builds, they're getting bidding wars, even on new builds, 35, 40 minutes outside London.
I don't even know how to explain it. I know that will probably be the first ones to get hit. If our inventory keeps going up and our sales aren't going as high as well, but I can't tell you enough. There's another huge reason why people are moving out of the main city into the other ones. They just don't recognize their neighborhood.
They're looking for that slower pace of life, which these older neighborhoods within the city had to offer. They're looking for that on those little sleepy towns, outside the outer edge. I get it, all your neighbors have moved out all new ones. The streets are busier. The crime is going up, even though we're not really, London is a very safe place, they want that hometown feel, which they felt when the city is going so fast.
Daniel: Georgia, thank you so much for that. All that information, you obviously did your work, obviously know what you're talking about. This is great. Anybody interested right now in exploring London and towns around London. And also at the beginning, Georgia mentioned that she also sells a lot of farms and I'm assuming country houses and stuff like that. You see her information there, please contact Georgia. She is your ticket to success in London. Thanks, Georgia.
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