Skyrocketing real estate prices leaving some buyers struggling to find a home

Skyrocketing costs for real estate during the pandemic are hitting Canadians hard, turning finding a home into an ordeal.

The excitement of shopping for their first home this past year quickly turned into a daunting task for Kathryn Quirk and her partner Tom.

“[We] started booking appointments for viewings, going to two or three a day, and very quickly realized that half a million dollars does not get you what you imagined in your head,” Quirk told CTV News.

The couple, who live in Waterloo, Ont., kept encountering what’s become a common occurrence: finding homes listed within their price range that would then go on to sell for $100,000 or $200,000 over asking.

“Knowing that it’s either move out to a small town or move out of province or continue to rent — it sucks, it’s really disheartening,” Quirk said.

The national average home price was over $720,000 in November, up nearly 20 per cent from the same time last year, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association.

“The housing market is scorching hot,” Elan Weintraub, co-founder of Mortgage Outlet, told CTV News. “I'm actually running out of adjectives to use. It went from hot to scorching to burning.”

Home prices that defy gravity have become a feature of the COVID-19 era.

“COVID is causing a lot of people to pull up stakes and move around who in a non-COVID world would have been in their forever home for the next 30-40 years,” Shaun Cathcart, senior economist with the Canadian Real Estate Association, explained.

At the same time, buyers are contending with a rush of people trying to take advantage of low mortgage rates.

“We talk about the bank of mom and dad, a lot of parents are pulling money out of their property to help their kids buy real estate,” Weintraub said.

That’s one of the factors driving up the price of homes in Vancouver and Toronto. One two-storey, semi-detached home which was recently listed was sold after just a day on the market for $1.71 million — which was $210,000 over asking.

Nicola St. John, with Bosley Real Estate in Ontario, told CTV News that there’s “nothing on the market.”

“Lowest inventory in the city since 2013.”

More than 630,000 homes have sold on the MLS system so far this year, well ahead of the 550,000 houses in 2020.

Experts say tight supply will continue and push prices even higher next year. While the growth in price isn’t expected to be as extreme in 2022, according to a CREA forecast released Wednesday, it will still be an issue.

And some are choosing to bow out for the moment.

The ongoing difficulty of finding a home has made Quirk and her partner decide to put off buying for now.

“With how crazy the housing market is, we've just decided to put it on hold,” she said.

With files from CTVNews.ca's Alexandra Mae Jones