Condo values drop in two luxury neighbourhoods in Mississauga

If you want to purchase a condo in one of Mississauga’s more luxurious neighbourhoods, now might be a good time to hop into the market.

According to Strata.ca, a real estate website that provides data for every single condominium in the Greater Toronto Area, condo values in two of Mississauga’s swankier neighbourhoods–Sheridan and Port Credit–dropped quite a bit in response to the pandemic in 2020. 

Strata.ca, which recently found that condo values in some of Toronto’s most in-demand neighbourhoods (such as Yorkville, The Annex and Casa Loma) dropped a whopping 30 per cent due to the pandemic, says that values are down 10.93 per cent in Sheridan and 4.71 per cent in Port Credit.

In Sheridan, the average price per square foot is now $414.11 and in Port Credit, it’s $569.04. 

Robert Van Rhijn, the Broker of Record at Strata.ca, said he was struck by the 61 per cent jump in Mississauga’s condo inventory last month compared to January 2020. 

Van Rhijn said that Mississauga was not spared by COVID-19, adding that the average price-per-square-foot dropped from a high of $850 in March 2020 to a low of $768 in October 2020. 

“We’re seeing the impact of that in some of Mississauga’s luxury neighbourhoods; the same way we are in Toronto,” he says.

As for what’s driving condo values down in luxurious neighbourhoods in Toronto and other parts of the GTA, Strata.ca’s report says that a shift in supply and demand is driving the drop. 

According to the report, more condos are hitting the market because Airbnb operators are selling their short-term rentals (with no tourists coming to town, investors are looking to offset their losses), students are no longer renting units and more people are choosing to live outside the city due to work-from-home policies. 

The report also says that luxury neighbourhoods lose their lustre for buyers when the things that made them most desirable–the restaurants, the cafes, the theatres, the nightlife, etc–are gone due to lockdown measures.

That said, the real estate market in Mississauga overall remains robust. 

“Despite these drops in parts of Mississauga, the city has rebounded aggressively. By the end of January, condos here were valued at nearly $580 per-square-foot,” Van Rhijn said. 

“That’s an increase of over 6 per cent over the past 60 days alone. As lockdown measures are lifted, I suspect prices will increase in Toronto. That’s when we’ll see a spillover into the Mississauga market, putting upward pressure on overall prices.”