featuring
The one who fell in love at first sight
The long-distance lovers
The enduring love
The love triangle
The ones holding on to first love
the buyers
Sandy Hunter
Richard & Heather Jones
Kristin Cripps
Justin & Ali Bellon
Jacob & Ben Morris
including the storyteller
Writer Andrea Yu
These cottagers bought in a rocky pandemic real estate market. Four years on, are they still in love with life at the lake?
it’s a familiar script
Through the Covid years, the cottage real estate market moved at a breakneck pace. Properties were changing hands fast, prices were inflated, bidding wars ensued, the rental market exploded. Beyond the conditions of the purchases themselves, people were doing deals in ways we had never seen before, just to get into the market. Whether it meant buying a property sight unseen, selling to take advantage of peak prices, or buying vacant land with plans to build later, the pandemic saw a host of new real estate trends. But now that a bit of time has passed, we’ve emerged from the lockdowns, and back-to-office mandates have taken effect, how have pandemic-era buyers and sellers fared? Is cottage ownership all they dreamed of, or has the reality of all the work and the money involved set in?
THE FIRST LOVE
Jacob and Ben Morris started hunting for a shared family cottage to buy. They had their hearts set on Sand Lake, in Kearney, Ont.,
