Moncton tops chart for best place to buy a house in Canada

As the spring weather bring more “for sale” signs to the Greater Moncton Area, the real estate market remains red hot in the city.

“Places are selling very very quickly,” said realtor Craig Eccles with Remax Quality Real Estate Inc. “It depends on the price point. I would say anything between the $200,000 to $350,000 range is going off right away. It’s going very quick.”

Eccles says he’s seen a lot of people moving to the area with many looking at Moncton for its prime location.

“They call it the hub city for a reason,” he said.

“It’s central to everything out on the east coast. So if you need to get a plane back to Ontario, say you have family there, you can fly very quickly. You can get to Halifax in under three hours. You can get to the states in less than two, so it’s very central. That’s why Moncton is, I believe, the number one city in the Maritimes for growth.”

The hub city tops the charts for the highest-ranked place to buy real estate in Canada.

“There’s no comparison when it comes to prices of homes compared to New Brunswick and Ontario. You can get much more home in New Brunswick then you can in Ontario for the same price,” said Eccles.

However, Moncton isn’t the only Maritime city attracting home buyers, according to a new survey by MoneySense.

The average price for a home in Greater Moncton last year was $320,817. Fredericton saw an average price of $284,642. Homes in Saint John cost around $276,450 and houses in the Halifax and Dartmouth area were selling for about $506,625.

All four Maritime cities made MoneySense’s list for the best bang for your buck when it comes to purchasing.

“Relatively speaking, if you take the average three-bedroom bungalow in Moncton compared to Toronto, it’s about a third of cost,” said certified financial planner John Maisey. “With that in mind, Moncton’s still looking very attractive, especially if you can work remotely from a Toronto employee and make the same wage, your dollar is definitely going to go further, inflation or not.”

He adds that the Maritime housing market also makes buying a home a possibility for some first-time buyers like his clients from the Toronto area.

“They were able to come down here and buy a nice three-bedroom home,” he said. “They have a very easy commute to work now, a matter of minutes instead of hours so they gained an hour-and-a-half, two hours of their life a day, as well as freed up cash flow.”

While there are positives to moving to the area, there are challenges as well for people looking to jump into the market.

“What I would say is if you are local here and you’re hoping to buy, I’d probably get moving sooner as opposed to later before the word gets out too far,” said Maisey.

As far as trends in the market, Eccles doesn’t expect it to slow down.

“I think, my opinion basically, is that it’s still going to trend up,” said Eccles. “About one year ago, spring of last year, prices were still going way above asking. It’s happening again because it’s a hot market, there’s very little inventory so it’s very hard to get into the market here if you aren’t willing to pay a little bit more.”

Both Eccles and Maisey point out that there is also a chance that if people decide to move back to a more expensive location, like Ontario, their money might not go as far.