266 King Street West.Canadian millennials are flocking to small towns. The double crisis of COVID-19 ‘s pandemic and housing affordability has led to an all-time high in the number of people leaving Canada’s largest city.Please Visit: 266 King Street West to Get Your VVIP Registration Today!
This is a dramatic reversal of the decades-old trend of young people fleeing small towns and flocking to urban centers. But experts believe that the town is in a concentric circle of urban house price spillover. The indigenous residents are also filled with emotion about the arrival of the new residents.
Markdale, about a two-hour drive from Toronto, is surrounded by acres of forest and farmland, and to outsiders, the town of about 1200 people looks just like any other town in Ontario. In the center of the quaint town, there are more than a dozen shops selling local goods, several churches, and Canadian flags flying in the wind on each porch.
Global News recently pointed out in a television feature that, in fact, this sleepy, humble town is in the process of reviving. Because some urbanites searched along Highway 10 and finally took root in the rural towns along the way. There they can buy affordable housing and get close to nature.
“this is one of the most significant changes in migration since the Industrial Revolution,” said Michael Haan, an associate professor at Western University and a demographer who studies domestic migration. “this marks the potential for the revitalization of rural Canada.”
McDale was in trouble after a surge in free trade in the 1990s forced many of the town’s manufacturing plants to close and move overseas. The remaining residents are getting older and older, few young people move to the town, shops are closed and houses are vacant.
But all this is changing rapidly. First came the emergence of Tim Hortons, a chain of coffee shops, and then supermarkets. Young people from Toronto are starting new businesses in the center of town, seeking to escape from city life.
A new 66 million yuan hospital is under construction and developers are building residential neighborhoods, saying hundreds of homes are being snapped up by young families in cities in southwestern Ontario. A local primary school was nearly closed due to a shortage of students and is rebuilding new facilities.
According to the mayor of the town, McDale has developed more in the past year than in the past 30 years, and shows no sign of slowing down.
“the countryside is no longer a stagnant, old-fashioned place to live, because amenities that used to be found only in cities are now available here,” Hahn said.
But the crisis of affordability that new residents are trying to get rid of has followed them into the countryside. In the past year alone, rental prices have risen sharply, and house prices in McDale have almost doubled, which has deterred many locals in the area.
Developer Devonleigh Homes says only 20-30 per cent of the homes under construction are expected to be sold to local buyers and the rest are likely to be sold to young families in southwestern Ontario cities.
In television footage, Eric Robertson, a real estate agent who has been living in the area, said that the local house price was 180000 yuan in 2014 and reached 570000 yuan in April 2021, which has more than tripled. It used to take about four months to sell houses in the area, but recently they can sell them within 24 hours.