Why Oakville Continues to Earn High Praise as an Ideal Place to Call Home
The Town of Oakville is located 25 minutes to the west of downtown Toronto and sits on the banks of Lake Ontario. Oakville has a small town feel with a robust downtown core that offers great dining, boutique shopping and a host of tailored amenities. With two beautiful harbours; Bronte Harbour and Oakville Harbour, three distinct downtown cores and some of the best walking trails for any community in North America. Oakville is Ontario’s largest town with approximately 195,000 residents.
The town’s focus on a green and sustainable community gives residents beautiful parks, trails and sporting and cultural facilities that are second to none: Oakville has both the largest soccer and rugby clubs in all of North America. It is also home to Glen Abbey Golf Club that regularly hosts the PGA’s Canadian Open Championship golf tournament.
Oakville is a safe and family-oriented community and is home to a globally recognized private school system and top-rated public schools in Ontario. It is a prosperous community that Maclean’s Magazine ranks in the top ten most affluent neighbourhoods in Canada and continually ranks in the top five best places to live in Canada.
Oakville is aptly known as a commuter town with easy access to two major highways and two train stations with quick commute times to downtown Toronto.
With such desirable amenities, Oakville has become an international destination and a community that welcomes people from all over the world.
Real Estate Market
Oakville has some of the most luxurious homes in Ontario. It is not uncommon to see lakefront homes with riparian rights sell for north of $20M both on and off-market. The average building lot in south east Oakville is now over $3M for 1/3 of an acre and there is high demand from local and international buyers for custom homes with large private estate lots.
North Oakville is a series of planned communities that has allowed the town to grow north of the QEW highway and south of the 407. It offers homes on smaller lots in subdivisions with great schools, parks, recreation complexes and popular shopping amenities.
Luxury Market
The average detached home in Oakville sold for $1,893,119 (MLS stats) in 2021. Real estate has grown tremendously during the Covid-19 pandemic seeing a 47.4% growth in average prices since 2016. As the pandemic hit, potential buyers flocked to Oakville to capitalize on its clean, safe and natural habitat to purchase luxury homes. Demand has outpaced supply and the market has continued to grow substantially since March 2020.
Foreign buyers make up 27.5% of the source of luxury home purchases in Oakville, 76% of which are represented by Chinese buyers. Homebuyers are mainly relocating from China, the US, the UK, Dubai, South Africa, Taiwan, Russia & Germany, while a large portion, 72.5%, are domestic buyers.
In 2016 the percentages were a little different with Chinese buyers representing close to 34% of the buyer market on homes greater than $2M. The 2017 introduction of the Foreign Buyer Tax for non-residents greatly impacted the source of foreign buyers and slowly declined after April 2017.
Despite this, the demand for luxury homes continues to grow in Oakville and fuels a very strong market.
For reference, the luxury home market is defined as $5M plus. For specific unit sales, refer to “The Effects of the Growing Luxury Market in Oakville”.
Want to know more? Connect with Murray McKeage directly at 905-484-2124 or [email protected]