The real estate market in Muskoka started the year with a very inaudible whimper this spring.  Usually our strongest season, market activity in the spring of 2003 got off to an extremely slow start. 

  There were many contributing factors to the slow real estate market.  The first was the extremely long winter and significant snowfall we received last winter.  Next, Torontonians experienced the scare of SARS, which stopped a lot of people from traveling anywhere. The Muskoka resorts and retail outlets that depend on the traveling vacationing public can attest that things were tough this spring and summer. I noticed a significant lack of American license plates in the region, up until late August.

  The fact that we did not participate in the war in Iraq may have had an additional impact on traveling Americans, along with the SARS and mad cow scares. All these factors put our market behind in sales volume by as much as 30% up until the early part of the summer.

  July started out slowly, but summer’s heat and humidity finally drove the southern Ontarians and others to Muskoka, causing sales began to pick up.  Thankfully for Muskoka’s worried real estate agents things continued to look up through the rest of the summer and into September.

  While late September saw sales slow down due to the horrid amount of rain and bad weather, things picked up in October, and have continued, with some sales through November as well.  Should the snow hold off and the warm weather continue, we could expect additional sales before Christmas.

  From a market value standpoint 2003 has seen an increase in market value for lower and middle market properties on both the big three lakes and strong growth on the smaller lakes around Muskoka.  Vacant land has also seen a strengthening of market value over last year.

  The high end property sales continued strong, but did not seem to have as great a market value increase as the other market segments mentioned above.

  The total number of MLS sales to November 23^rd is down by 100 sales. However, the dollar volume of those sales is up about 27 million dollars.

  With interest rates continuing to be low, the stock market rocky and the economy growing we can expect the real estate market in Muskoka to continue to be strong in 2004 and beyond.  More and more people want to spend leisure time in Muskoka. The region continues to be a growing relocation market for those who are looking to make a lifestyle change from city life, as well as an attractive alternative for retirees.

Steven Curry, Broker/Own, Re/Max Muskoka Realty 
Corp. E-mail  steve@muskokaonthewater.com  or visit the website at www.muskokaonthewater.com