Your Condo World Blog

Woodstock Condos

By Peter Daoust, Broker, RE/MAX Advantage Realty

When an automobile giant announces it plans to build a new automobile assembly plant – the first in Canada, in two decades, what happens to real estate prices in the immediate area ?

Well, they go up. That’s what happened in Woodstock back in 2005 when Toyota made the announcement but then came the wait in 2006 ,2007, 2008 and the recession of 2009. During this period of  time Woodstock did not really feel the influx of new workers, and other manufacturing firms were struggling just to stay a float. Cami too, in Ingersoll, sputtered along as GM had more than its fair share of bad news.

Proof of this meltdown is indicated in the following numbers. In 2005, one hundred and fifty condos changed hands on the Woodstock MLS system. In 2006, this number dropped down to one hundred and eighteen units. This number dropped down to one hundred and ten units in 2007, ninety-nine units in 2008 and then further dropped down to sixty-three units in 2009.

Surprisingly however, this meltdown did not affect the upper end of the Woodstock condo marketplace. In 2005, there were eighteen MLS sales between the $200,000 - $300,00 mark, twelve in 2006, sixteen in 2007, fourteen in 2008 and eighteen once again in 2009.

Why once again did condo sales seem to fall off a cliff? Well, one of the reasons is that during this period of time, there was a new realization that many of the soon to be new employees at Toyota would actually be commuters driving in from other towns.

We asked Ben Sage, Sales Representative and condo specialist with Remax A-B Realty Ltd., in Woodstock to comment on all of this. “There are many Toyota employees who drive in from the K/W/Cambridge area. I think that many come from as far away as Mississauga and Guelph too, but these are speculations” says Ben.

Once again, there were a lot of crosswinds blowing in the Woodstock condo marketplace over the last four years, as a declining number of nervous buyers tried to do battle with the resilient sellers who had visions in their mind of better times ahead.

More now about Woodstock Condos. In many ways, Woodstock has tie-ins with the London marketplace, which is only about thirty-two miles (51 kms) away. Many of Londons biggest condo developers are doing business there. Rembrandt, for example, is busy finishing up a nice upscale project on Lakeview Drive, just North of the Pittock Conservation Area and Drewlo has been busy for years in Woodstock putting up high-rises. Prices are much the same in Woodstock for condos as they are in London and the selection in styles and location is surprisingly large. You can still purchase, for example, a starter type two bedroom unit, in a low rise apartment building on Hiawatha Road for about $80,000; a stylish two bedroom low rise apartment style unit, overlooking a creek and a golf course on Ferguson Drive for the $125,000 range; or a gas heated three bedroom townhouse style unit on Fanshawe Park Drive for that same amount of money. Moving up to the top end of the condo marketplace you will find nearly a dozen luxury complexes with two car garages, averaging anywhere in price between $180,000 and $280,000.

It must also be mentioned that Woodstock is known as being The Dairy Capital of Canada and many retirees from the surrounding rural areas and other parts of Ontario are now choosing to retire here. Many one floor luxury condo projects have recently been constructed to help accommodate these growing needs.

Will the sale of Woodstock condos suddenly start to take off once again as the second wave of the new Toyota workers (the second shift) becomes a reality? We think so.  Both the north and south end of Woodstock have impressive development projects in play (including the construction of a new hospital) and the size of the new Toyota plant is truly staggering. The future of Woodstock looks very bright, indeed!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.