What a difference 17 years makes! Sometimes it takes a little time for an idea or a place to catch on. When I came to Blue Mountain in 2000, Collingwood was a sleepy little town. There was no Village at Blue Mountain and Blue was basically a winter resort. Fast forward to 2017, Blue Mountain is truly the definition of a four season resort, Ontario’s most popular four-season resort with over 2 million visitors per year. People not only want to visit Blue Mountain, more and more Ontarians want to make it their permanent home.
What a difference a year makes! I transferred to Blue Mountain from Mont-Tremblant in the summer of 2000 to sell resort real estate for Intrawest. In my 10 years working for the developer and the past 7 years owning my own brokerage, I have never seen a market like this. It was like someone had turned on a switch in spring 2016. That switch somehow made fence-sitters want to buy, and buy they did. Properties that would normally linger were being scooped up in a matter of days, often with multiple offers. Even the Village at Blue Mountain condominiums picked up momentum. Where typically about 100 of 800 condos in The Village were listed for re-sale, the number plummeted to about 50. Prices were trending upward while the numbers of listings were trending downwards. Local real estate agents were astounded, as were buyers and sellers.
What a difference two months make! I often tell my young adult children, as much as you think you control every aspect of your life, events out of your control can change your circumstances overnight. Four letters have had a significant impact on the Ontario real estate market. They are NRST, an acronym for Non-Resident Speculation Tax. It is a 15% Ontario tax on foreign nationals purchasing property in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario that came into law April 21st, 2017. The net effect has been a general cooling off of the real estate market in the GGH. The good news is Blue Mountain and Collingwood don’t fall into the territory of this non-resident tax. I have a good feeling that real estate in our area will continue strengthen. The fence-sitting days are over. You never know what a difference the next day will make.