WINGHAM, ONT -- Finding a home for sale in Midwestern Ontario is kind of like finding a needle in a haystack right now.

“There are nine single family homes for sale in Goderich. By week’s end, there’s probably going to be six, if not less than that,” says Goderich realtor, Donny Rivers.

It’s been 30 years since there’s been this few homes for sale in Huron, Perth, Bruce and Grey County. And that lack of supply is driving prices to record setting levels month after month.

“Since the calendar flipped over to 2021, it seems like it’s picked up even more when it already seemed to be at a crazy point last year,” says Cory Hamilton, a Kincardine based realtor for Royal LePage.

The average sale price for a home in Huron-Perth last month was $536,548. Last year at this point, it was $425,000. That’s a 27 percent increase. In Grey-Bruce, the jump has been even larger, from $400,500 in February 2020, to an average sale price of $613,373 last month. That is a 54% increase.

“We’re seeing stuff, that I don’t think we’ve seen here, before,” says Hamilton.

Up until last year homes would last between five and seven months on market in Midwestern Ontario. Last month, the average was two to three weeks.

“Probably from 2006 to 2019, I would have seen a handful of multiple offers. Five or six in a 15 year period. Now it’s not rare to see five, six, nine offers on one house. It’s rare if you’d don’t have multiple offers, right now,” says Rivers, who is the Broker of Record for Coldwell Banker All Points-Festival City Realty.

The renewed possibility of working from home due to the pandemic has brought more buyers from cities like London, Kitchener and Toronto to small towns across Midwestern Ontario, which is also driving up prices.

“When your holding offers and your getting ten offers, one or two will be a city buyer and they’re noticeably offering more which makes it harder for local buyers,” says Hamilton.

Low interest rates, pent up demand, a desire to escape the city and only a handful of new homes being built means more real estate records will almost certainly be set in Midwestern Ontario in the months to come.

“I think we’re probably looking at the next couple of years, at least, where we’re going to have significant demand without the supply,” says Rivers.

For a deeper breakdown of the red hot real estate market in Midwestern Ontario, here’s links to the most recent numbers from real estate boards in Huron-Perth, and Bruce-Grey.