The City of Barrie is one of Canada\u2019s most expensive rental markets.<\/p>\n
PadMapper determined that one- and two-bedroom apartments in Barrie averaged $1,730 and $1,920, respectively, in July\u2014to put that in perspective, a one-bedroom unit in Toronto was $1,710. However, unlike Canada\u2019s largest city, Barrie isn\u2019t replete with high-rises, and while the resulting rental supply crunch is pushing prices upward, secondary suites are beginning to proliferate in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were hundreds of illegal apartments but when the city passed new a bylaw allowing for legal second suites in any zoning area in the City of Barrie, it was only a matter of time before the floodgates opened for investors to flock here and buy up single-family homes to put in second entrances or make basement suites,\u201d said Jeremy Brooks, license partner at Engel & V\u00f6lkers Barrie. \u201cThe east and north ends of Barrie are filled with old bungalows from the \u201850s and \u201860s that already have second entrances and they\u2019ve been getting snatched up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barrie has been undergoing major changes during the last few years and embraced a nascent urbanism that includes the near its six-kilometre waterfront. Moreover, the city expects 210,000 new residents in the next decade and 129,000 new jobs by 2041.<\/p>\n
But COVID-19 seems to have kicked migration to Barrie into high gear and it\u2019s created robust demand for housing. The city has attracted a lot of buyers from the GTA because of its comparatively larger lots, and now single-family homes that sold for $600,000-700,000 a few years ago are pushing $1 million, consequently creating a larger pool of renters.<\/p>\n
\u201cBarrie opened up the door for legal garden suites, so now without any zoning restrictions at all you can have a single-family home and build a separate detached garden suite in the backyard that\u2019s up to 10% of your lot coverage, and there aren\u2019t any development charges at all. You just need a permit,\u201d said Brooks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would be guessing at least 50 of those popped up in the city in the last 16 months alone. That\u2019s really opened up the market for investors, and with that has come an increase in rents. It\u2019s higher than I ever would have guessed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The main floor of a duplexed bungalow can rent for as much $2,000, while the basement could command $1,750-1,800, added Brooks.<\/p>\n
of buying activity in Barrie is attributable to GTA residents, and while the city\u2019s rental pool is believed to have more diverse provenance, a substantial cohort hail from abroad.<\/p>\n
\u201cGeorgian College has been growing and they\u2019ve made it a priority to attract international students, a lot of whom make up a big chunk of people coming into the city. In fact, a lot of the north and east end rental markets are driven by international students,\u201d said Brooks. \u201cOutside of that, people have been coming to Barrie for the last three to five years because it\u2019s one of the safest cities in Ontario, the hospital is growing\u2014south Barrie has the medical campus now\u2014and there are so many different retail stores and restaurants popping up all the time. It\u2019s a city that\u2019s experiencing a lot of growth literally because of growth\u2014the more attention it gets, the more people move here, and the pandemic really put a magnifying glass on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, not everybody welcomes seeing their erstwhile sleepy town bustle, especially in such a condensed period of time. Garden suites, in particular, have drawn the ire of NIMBYs, and while they might not be in their backyards, they\u2019re pretty close.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city is, as we speak, doing a review of the bylaw for garden suites to see if they need to regulate them more for size and the application process outside of just having a house with a backyard,\u201d said Brooks. \u201cIt will be interesting to see if the city does put the brakes on that with this rental demand.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The City of Barrie is one of Canada\u2019s most expensive rental markets. PadMapper determined that one- and two-bedroom apartments in Barrie averaged $1,730 and $1,920, respectively, in July\u2014to put that in perspective, a one-bedroom unit in Toronto was $1,710. However, unlike Canada\u2019s largest city, Barrie isn\u2019t replete with high-rises, and while the resulting rental supply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":27457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9292"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23910,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9292\/revisions\/23910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}