Even more Quebecers have changed their address in the last year, notably in order to acclimatize to the confinement and to have access to bigger spaces.
"What people want is light, a big patio, a place to plant tomatoes and a backyard to be able to decompress and go outside," summarizes Marc Lefrançois, a real estate broker at Royal LePage Tendance.
More than 780,000 address changes have been listed by the government in 2020-2021.
That's 80,000 more than the previous year and a five-year high, reveal data obtained by Le Journal from the Service québécois de changement d'adresse.
Since 2016-2017, 3.4 million people have registered a new address.
During that period, interest in areas far from major urban centers was already being felt.
This trend was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Montreal is emptying
For example, inward and outward migration in the Lanaudière region has resulted in a net population increase of 9,000 people, according to the Institut de la statistique du Québec, while the island of Montreal has lost nearly 36,000 citizens.
These movements within Quebec have come to target real estate demand in suburbs or MRCs that are a little more remote and are not used to having such a volume of transactions," observes Francis Cortellino, an economist at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
The popularity of cities such as Val-d'Or, in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Shawinigan, in Mauricie, or Sainte-Adèle, in the Laurentians, has resulted in an increase in house prices ranging from 15 per cent to 25 per cent," said Cortellino.
Restricted offer
While the mobility of the Quebec population is increasing, it will be necessary to be patient before the real estate market supply is no longer overheated, experts remind us.
Condominium construction projects, in particular, will take several months to see the light of day.
The developer has to buy the land, get the permits from the city and negotiate financing," says Marc Lefrançois. It's going to take a long time to come up with a new inventory that will meet this demand. "
All housing units combined, the vacancy rate was 3.2 per cent in 2020 in Canada's census metropolitan areas, according to CMHC.
Source : Article by Laurent Lavoie on the website journaldemontreal.com on 27 mai 2021.
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