‘You’re buying a lifestyle’

Got a few million bucks for a new place to lay your head?

Several are on the market in Winnipeg, from a $5.4 million Wellington Crescent mansion to a $5.2 million five-bed, nine-bath property with an infinity salt-water pool.

Garry Parkes remembers the day he sold a $1 million home in Winnipeg, roughly 10 years ago.

“It was the most expensive house that was sold,” said Becky Parkes, his wife and business partner. “In 10 years, it’s changed dramatically.”

Take last year: the Parkes team sold a $5 million shack, the now most-expensive home sold in the city.

“Everything’s gone up, and so have house prices,” Becky said. “There’s a lot of people at a million (dollar spending range).

“There’s less after two (million), and way less after three. When you get to five, there aren’t that many people.”

Still, house hunters are buying. Twenty-five homes have sold above $2 million in Winnipeg over the past 30-plus years, the Winnipeg Regional Real Estate Board has tracked. Of those, 19 were bought in the last five years.

Several homes built for clients are “well over $3 million,” noted Garry, who’s been in real estate for 45 years.

More homes are purchased in the $1 million-$2 million range: 267 homes, to be exact, over the past five years.

“I think one of the things the pandemic has taught us is if we’re going to be stuck in our homes ever again, they have to be comfortable,” Becky said. “That’s kind of spurred the market, I think, for the higher-end homes.”

Remote workers are saving money on commutes, possibly giving them more room for discretionary spending, she added.

Costs to build and renovate houses have increased, contributing to more high-priced homes, said Rena Prefontaine, the Winnipeg Regional Real Estate Board’s president.

Supply and demand have also contributed, she said.

Becky is selling a near-$5 million home by Peanut Park on Ruskin Row — the third most expensive in Royal LePage’s Winnipeg listings as of last Friday — that’s been completely remodelled.

It has a library, a music room, a butler’s pantry, seven bedrooms and bathrooms. There’s a hidden walk-in closet, Becky said, adding the family “thought of everything.”

The owners, who are downsizing, said the cost of renovating the century-old home nearly doubled what it would have cost to demolish the building and restart. They’re looking to recoup costs, contributing to the multimillion-dollar price tag.

The $5.4 million Wellington Crescent mansion has a golf simulator and sauna on its 1.2-acre premises.

“You’re buying a lifestyle,” said Prefontaine. “You’re not just buying a house at that price range.”

Winnipeg’s most expensive houses barely hold a candle to those in metropolitan areas such as Vancouver and Toronto, she acknowledged.

So far this year, five properties in Toronto have sold for more than $10 million, according to a Sotheby’s International Realty Canada report. It’s down from seven properties sold in the same price range, in the same time frame, last year.

Vancouver’s luxury residential sales over $4 million dropped 18 per cent when comparing the first half of 2023 to 2022. However, Vancouver’s ultra-luxury sales — homes priced over $10 million — climbed 38 per cent year-over-year.

Legacy wealth planning and generational wealth transfers kept up demand in Vancouver, Sotheby’s reported.

Overall, Canada’s major luxury real estate markets “remained remarkably resilient despite the headwinds of multiple interest rate hikes and unpredictable economic performance,” Sotheby’s International Realty Canada CEO Don Kottick is quoted saying in a news release.

“The market had kind of gotten soft… and now it’s picking up again,” Becky Parkes said, referring to Winnipeg. “There are people out there who are still buying. Did they (all) have to get a mortgage? No.”

If either — or both — the Wellington Crescent home or the $5.2 million property near the Assiniboine Forest sell for list price, they’ll become the most expensive homes sold on the market in Winnipeg history, as far as the Winnipeg Regional Real Estate Board has tracked.

The overwhelming majority of Winnipeg homes fall below the $1 million sale mark, Prefontaine highlighted. Just one per cent of all sales last June came from homes exceeding that checkpoint.

Sixty per cent of Winnipeg homes sold for less than $450,000 last month. Homes priced between $350,000 and $399,000 were the most popular, accounting for 14.5 per cent of sales, Prefontaine said.

In June, the average Winnipeg single detached home cost $418,158. A year earlier, it cost $426,541; in 2019, $334,893.

“As Winnipeg continues to grow, too, the demand for houses of all price points grows,” Prefontaine said. “There is (more of) a market for higher-priced homes now, in Winnipeg, than there was even 10 years ago.”

She emphasized the city is a stable marketplace for real estate, and that immigration “strengthens our market.”

Location, amenities and design all contribute to a property’s valuation, she said.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com