To put it mildly, 2020 has been a volatile year. Businesspeople of all types have been thrown for a loop owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the midst of so much uncertainty, however, many local homebuilders are having banner years. Especially in our corner of southeast Manitoba, it’s a booming market.
In the first six months of the year, the Town of Niverville approved 29 building permits, totalling $9 million of construction value. The vast majority of these permits have been for new residential homes. This is about equal to the same period last year, the difference being that in 2019 these permits grew steadily month by month, and only came to $7 million in construction value. In 2020, housing activity got off to a bang in February, then trailed off in March and April before sharply rebounding.
The RM of Ritchot has gotten even further ahead of last year. So far in 2020, they’ve issued 97 building permits, totalling $18 million in construction value, 18 of which are new homes. This compares to 71 building permits of $12 million in 2019.
Doug Dyck of Heritage Lane Builders says that in all his years in business, he has never seen the housing market so hot. But over the past six months, the outlook has been a bit hard to predict.
“As far as our anticipation initially coming into the year, I thought, ‘This is going to be a hot year. This is going to be an incredible year,’” says Dyck. “That was pre-COVID. So then COVID hit and there was so much uncertainty.”
Heritage Lane Builders has established a strong presence in the rural southeast over the last decade. They’re most active in Niverville’s newer subdivisions, Fifth Avenue Estates and The Highlands, but they also have homes in Tourond Creek in St. Adolphe, as well as in communities further north like Headingly, Garson, and Tyndall. They’re gearing up to start a few homes in St. Francis Xavier as well.
In the early stages of the pandemic, the biggest question for Dyck and other homebuilders was whether their industry would be shut down by the government, like so many others.
Instead, residential homebuilding was deemed to be an essential service—and the impact of that decision has been large.
“Still, that first three weeks to a month [in March and April], we were very uncertain as to what was going to happen,” he says. “I had some predictions during that time, although I had my hesitations, too—some cautions, I would say—as to how many homes to build, how far to extend myself.”
He says his initial approach was to proceed carefully. But at the same time, he didn’t want the threat of the pandemic to stop the company from being aggressive.
“My theory, and it was only a theory, because there was no data to back it up, because this is a completely new time in our lives, was that there were going to be builders that would hold back. So I to put in inventory, so that when [restrictions] would lift, and I believed somewhere along the line they would lift, I would be the one that would have inventory. So we kind of played it in the reverse.”
That decision, to rev up construction at a time when others might be pulling back, meant he and his 14 staff took no downtime in the early spring.
This isn’t the first time Dyck has taken that kind of risk.
“I remember some years ago, 13 or 14 years ago, we were struggling,” he says. “The market was really down and I didn’t lay anyone off. The costs were still there, but the revenue wasn’t. It was not a good two years. I lost several years of gain in a two-year time. But I kept everybody. I said, you know, when this lull is over I want to be out there… I didn’t like using our reserves that way, but I wanted people to know [our company] was strong, that we’d been here for a long time and we were going to be here for a long time to come. Even though it hurt, that wasn’t a bad choice. It was a good choice going forward to just stay at it.”
Once again, that approach seems to be paying off. In a good year, Dyck says, the highwater mark for Heritage Lane Builders would be constructing somewhere in the neighbourhood of 49 homes. In 2020, his company is poised to shatter that record. They’ve already got 32 homes in the ground, at various stages from just getting their building permits to nearing completion, and another eight or nine about to get started.
“Last week, we had five meetings on custom builds,” he adds. “I’m going to get some of those. And then this week we have another three custom build meetings. That’s way, way more than I’ve ever experienced in my career. We’re getting a lot more customs. Whether it’s in Niverville or outside town, there’s a lot of activity… We’re well ahead. I don’t know the numbers, but my staff was telling me the other day that their prediction was that we would hit 60 homes this year, [although] I think that’s a little bit high.”
All-Time High Demand
Dyck says there are a lot of reasons customers are attracted to places like Niverville, Ritchot, and other communities around the fringes of Winnipeg.
“It’s not a science, and I can only go by what I’m hearing from some of my customers, and of course from the realtors. I take my cue from them,” Dyck says. “But what I’m seeing is that, first of all, in our areas, especially Niverville, you’re buying for less. There’s no question. And people want elbow room. You know, they were pent up in the city and they needed room to breathe.”
Another reason, he says, is that a lot of older people are retiring. As a result, they’re getting out of larger homes in the city—particular in the south and west ends of the city—and looking to downsize in a place where they can get the most bang for their buck.
“These people probably have good equity in their homes, so they’re coming here for smaller homes, with less maintenance, more freedom. And they want brand-new. They might be spending less than what they got for their home in Island Lakes, for example. So those are all really positive [trends] for us.”
Another trend is people moving to places like Niverville and Ritchot to be closer to family. Dyck says that he sees this quite often. It starts with a young family being drawn to the rural southeast, and then the parents follow soon after.
“I’m now building homes for the parents of the kids that I previously sold to,” he says. “Because they want to be close to their kids, they want to be close to their grandkids. So it’s the first generation coming after the second generation. We have a lot of this happening, more and more all the time.”
Collaborative Spirit
According to Dyck, builders and developers in the region have been active in recent years responding to the latest trends and figuring out what customers are looking for. The result has been a spirit of collaboration.
“We have some great developers out here,” he says. “They’ve created such opportunity for us. We get a chance to sit down with them, to tell them what we want these lots to look like. We get a chance to give them the feedback. They want to know what people are buying, what people want… When does a builder get a chance to sit down with the developer and help them come up with their next phases, to try and keep up with market trends?”
He cites the houses going up right now on Aberdeen Drive in The Highlands in Niverville. The Highlands is developed by Sunset Estates, run by Len Peters.
“Aberdeen is a great example of that collaborative effort,” Dyck says. “I think on Aberdeen this year we’re going to have four [homes] going up. One other is with Gerald Stoez, and I know Connection’s got something up. I then have three more coming up on this street. So that’s faster than normal… and we’re just going to keep pushing. Len [Peters] is now got machinery at work carrying on the street, because we need more lots next spring.”
Connection Homes and Gerald Stoez Construction are two other prominent builders in the Niverville area. Others include Von Reisen Homes and Wallace, Wallace and Edwards.
Dyck is straightforward about the fact that these other builders are his competition, but he points out that the various builders offer different products—and they need each other, especially during boom years like 2020.
“We sit down with these guys, and it’s really good,” he says. “Yes, in the real world it’s competition. But I like to use a different word—completion… We all have different clients, we all build differently, and there’s a variation between one and the other. We need that. If you had only one [builder] in town, I think that would be the death of the neighbourhood. You need to round things out, for the diversification.”
Dyck says the same spirit of collaboration is alive with the builders and developers of Tourond Creek in St. Adolphe.
“We’re honest with each other, and I know this is an old cliché, but… together we are strong. It’s a cliché, but it’s really true. I could keep going on and on about that. I love these communities. This is where we got our start and this is where we’ll always be.”
