Manitoba Real Estate: A Peek at the Brandon Housing Market

Known as one of the sunniest cities in Canada, Brandon, Manitoba has consistently landed in the top 10 communities across Canada in MoneySense Magazine’s Best Places to Live rankings. These factors, along with many out-of-province homebuyers seeing affordable opportunities, have helped keep this local Manitoba real estate market flourishing.

As the second-largest city in the province of Manitoba, Brandon is drawing in prospective buyers from across the country. Sitting in the southwestern portion of the province and close to the Saskatchewan border, life in Brandon provides residents with lots of opportunities, including access to post-secondary education, abundant recreational activities, and a housing market that is both stable and affordable – a rare gem amid a bounty of red-hot, overpriced markets from coast-to-coast.

Brandon, Manitoba Real Estate Continues to Burn Red Hot

Coming off a scorching winter where housing prices and sales both were rising at unprecedented speeds, the Brandon, Manitoba real estate market is continuing to heat up. By the end of August, 71 single-detached homes were sold through the MLS System of the Brandon Area REALTORS®. Not only was this a 14.5-per-cent increase over August 2020, but it was also the opposite trend as the rest of the province. In fact, the Manitoba saw unit sales decrease 11.1 per cent when comparing August 2021 to August 2020 – indicating that the Brandon housing market is still heating up even as the rest of the province is beginning to cool down slightly.

Looking at the bigger picture, unit sales of single detached homes hit a high in the month of August in more than five years. This value was also 22.4 per cent higher than the five-year average and 23.1 per cent higher than the 10-year average for the month of August.

Since mid-2020, the real estate market in Brandon has been flourishing, suggesting that pandemic-influenced shifts in consumer activity have benefitted this local market. With the widespread increase in remote working environments, working professionals are no longer bound to urban or suburban living; accordingly, more out-of-province buyers are keen to purchase a larger home in a more rural area, for an affordable price. This increase in demand in the Brandon real estate market has cemented itself in the year-to-date sales for the first eight months of the year totalling 582 units. This is more than a 34-per-cent increase compared to the first eight months of 2020.

High demand usually leads to an increase in price – specifically when the inventory doesn’t quite match what buyers are looking for. The median sale price of a single-detached home in Brandon increased by 4.9 per cent to $292,000 between August 2020 and 2021. When compared to Manitoba as a whole, the median sale price for a home in Brandon during the month of August in Brandon is 12 per cent less than the $332,056 average of the province, so despite this upward movement, prices remain comparatively affordable. On a year-to-date comparison, this difference becomes even more substantial as the average price of a home sold between January and August 2021 in Brandon was a mere $288,000.

The slight increase in home price and demand led to a new record being set for the month of August in terms of sales volume. The dollar value of single-detached home sales in the city during the month of August was  22.5 per cent higher than that of August 2020, coming in at $23.1 million.

As could be predicted based on the sale price and increase in unit sales, the average time a single-detached property spent on the market before selling in August 2021 was just 12 days – almost half of the 23.5 days registered in August 2020.

Will Prices in Brandon Manitoba Continue to Rise?

As the year progresses and interest rates remain low, housing prices may continue to rise in Brandon, mostly due to high demand and a continued desire from homebuyers from neighbouring (more expensive) provinces, looking to branch in search of affordable homes.

Sources:

• Best Place in Canada
• CREA Brandon, Manitoba
• Real Estate Manitoba