When it comes to real estate investing, the name of the game is location, location, location.
Where you decide to invest your money dictates the long-term profitability of your investment properties and your success as an investor.
As a savvy real estate investor, you naturally want to invest in the best-performing markets. That way, you know that your properties will experience the highest appreciation and generate the most cash flow available to help you achieve financial freedom and expand your investment portfolio.
Just as importantly, where you invest must have a quality team to manage and maintain your investment property to ensure one’s long-term success.
Too often, I’ve seen investors enter a city like Sudbury; they buy a bunch only to sell everything and leave town shortly after. As an active member of the investor community since 2007, I’ve seen a lot, and there are more ways to lose money than make it, even in this amazing market we’ve been in since the last crash of 2007/08.
To learn which towns have helped real estate investors achieve the most success, here are the 5 top-performing towns and cities for real estate investing in Ontario.
Hamilton
Hamilton is a city known for experiencing massive growth in recent years.
The city has become a very attractive place for both new and old families to live, contributing to a revitalized population with a thriving economy with a below-average unemployment rate. Hamilton is also home to many families who work elsewhere in the GTA but choose to commute to work instead of moving into more expensive cities and towns such as Toronto.
As a result, Hamilton has a very high demand for rental properties, with prospective tenants frequently offering to pay over asking price to secure good apartments and rental units, making the market incredibly profitable for real estate investors.
Additionally, as a property owner in Hamilton, you can apply to build laneway housing – a secondary dwelling built in the backyard of a home that opens to the back lane of the property.
This not only creates additional housing to meet the demand in the city, but it also creates an additional source of cash flow for the property owner.
In the last year, it is estimated that housing prices in Hamilton have increased by 12.9 percent, meaning that if you purchased a home for $650,000 last year, it could be worth over $730,000 now.
Brantford
Brantford is considered one of the most business-friendly cities in North America, including real estate businesses. With its rapidly growing population and recent boundary expansion back in 2017, Brantford is a city that is currently experiencing a steady growth period, which is perfect for real estate investors looking to get in early.
The city of Brantford has a detailed development plan to cover the next 20 years of growth in the city to accommodate the ever-growing population. This is incredible for investors because they can look at the plans to improve the city and arrange their investments accordingly to maximize their own portfolios’ growth.
Currently, the average sale price for a home in Brantford is estimated to be over $832,000, with a 19 percent increase compared to last year’s prices.
Niagara Region
Many people viewed the Niagara region as nothing more than a tourist trap with little interest beyond appealing to tourists. However, in recent years the housing market in the region has seen serious success despite the Covid-19 pandemic devasting the tourism industry.
In fact, residential real estate in the region has seen a massive surge in value in recent years. For example, the home price index in St Catharines in January 2021 was $527,000. By January 2022, that price had risen to $790,000, an approximate 50 percent increase from the previous year.
Now, with the majority of restrictions lifted, towns like Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake have seen a massive resurgence in the local tourism industry, bringing back the demand for commercial property usages such as hotels and short-term rental properties (Airbnb, VRBO, etc.)
Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge
While technically being three separate towns, the KWC region is still one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. This can be attributed to the region’s booming job market and the interconnected nature of these cities.
In KWC, it is not uncommon to find residents commuting between cities to take advantage of job opportunities in other parts of the region, contributing to the financial health of each city.
Additionally, each city has a wide variety of different forms of housing available, ranging from downtown apartments to suburban single-family homes with plenty of yard space.
However, investors need to note that the city of Waterloo does have rental licensing requirements. This means that if you plan to buy in the city of Waterloo, you will need to apply for a specific license that is renewed yearly.
Housing prices are currently up by 19.6 percent year over year in the region, with the average home price sitting at over $890,000 in each city.
Belleville
Real estate investors can often find themselves intimidated entering the market for the first time because they are unsure where to start. Fortunately for them, Belleville has consistently been a strong choice for new investors looking for an affordable city to begin building their portfolios.
Recently, Belleville also experienced a record-high increase in home prices.
In 2021, the average home price in Belleville was $547,626, which is 43.9 percent higher than the 2020 average of $380,658. This record-breaking increase has been tremendously beneficial for investors who invested in the region early.
In May 2022, the average price of homes sold was $685,583, a sizable gain of 13.9% from May 2021.
Invest for the Future, Not the Past
One of the most important things you should always do as an investor is to structure your investments off of what will happen, not what already has.
If you want to generate meaningful wealth, look at regions currently investing in infrastructure or business developments and buy early.
That way, once the cities begin to see the return on their investments, you can experience the greatest returns on your own.
If you are looking to connect with your fellow investors and learn how to build generational wealth, you should consider coming to our upcoming events.
We host a variety of networking opportunities, including our monthly real estate meetups, free in-person real estate training and Street Smart Tours to learn more about real estate opportunities around the GTA.
If you are interested in signing up or would like to learn more, visit our website at https://www.infinitywealth.ca/events today.
Happy Investing
Erwin
