cannington ontario

Canadians more interested in buying property in this Ontario town than anywhere else

A lot of young Canadians are really into the idea of buying a house right now, as evidenced by recent poll results, sales data, and the fact that we're all compulsively clicking on cool real estate listings as they pop into our feeds.

But don't take my word for it; take Google's.

The search giant just published some interesting stats regarding "housing and mortgage-related searches," which have reportedly spiked to new heights in Canada.

"The COVID pandemic has made many Canadians re-evaluate their idea of the home. Our latest Google Trends reveal what Canadians are searching for when it comes to house hunting and mortgages," announced Google Canada on Wednesday.

"Housing and mortgage-related searches reached record highs over the last year, as Canadians went online to begin their home buying journey. Many for the first time," Google continued.

"Searches for house for sale, mortgage loans, mortgage calculators and mortgage rates are the highest they've been in five years."

If you've been following local real estate trends, this shouldn't surprise you in the least — house sales and prices have been skyrocketing in Toronto since the latter half of 2020 after a brief pandemic lull and analysts fear things won't slow down any time soon.

With detached home inventory at historic lows and office employees growing tired of working from home in their tiny condos, many people are showing interest in larger, cheaper properties outside the city.

And according to Google, some small towns are attracting more attention from potential buyers than others.

"Google Trends indicate Canadians are looking to relocate outside of city centres, into cottages or buying properties in suburban and rural areas," writes the tech company.

"In fact, many of the top regions Canadians searched for 'houses in …' last year were quite the opposite of your typical big city."

I'll say. Here's the list of the the top cities in which Canadians have been searching for houses online over the past year:

  1. Cannington, ON
  2. Orléans, ON
  3. Clarington, ON
  4. Surrey, BC
  5. Port Moody, BC
  6. Kawartha Lakes, ON
  7. London, ON
  8. Laval, QC
  9. Abbotsford, BC
  10. Langley, BC

Three Ontario municipalities take up the top three slots, all of them significantly smaller than Toronto. Clarington, located in Durham Region, boasts just over 92,000 residents, while Orleans, near Ottawa, has about 117,000.

Cannington, however, took the number one spot with an estimated population of just 2,000 people. That's less than half of Letterkenny!

Google only explains the what, not the why, but a few potential reasons for the rush on Cannington stand out for me — least of which is that it's on a GO bus route with connections to Toronto.

The drive is nearly two hours from Cannington, which is part of Brock Township, to the downtown core, but such a commute (especially one that's infrequent) might be worth it when you can score 58 acres of land for $600,000.

It also seems like a beautiful place; one quaint town surrounded by farms amid the majestic landscape of Ontario's Kawartha Lakes region. I can dig it.

Now, Cannington doesn't have its own Tim Hortons (I checked), but it is located along the Beaver River — and what could be more Canadian than that?

Lead photo by

Eunice Gibb


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