The folks down the street were pumped when a buyer finally came along.

“Seven months,” she said. “Never thought it would take so long, since we priced to sell. But thank God we got out now.”

Old Town. Waterview. Renovated. They thought selling last autumn would be a no-brainer. So they went ahead and bought firm down on Lake Erie. Then Trump showed up. And the stress began.

Real estate’s a mess right now. Sales are down everywhere. The GTA has a whack of condos nobody wants. Inventory is up. Days-on-market swelling. Trade wars, tariffs and recession are on the wind. But, weirdly, prices haven’t moved much.

“I believe that we, as a nation, will remain cautious until Trump’s tariffs with Canada are resolved, in one way or another,” says local Sotheby agent Kymberley McKee. “Once we know what we’re dealing with, the economy may begin to gradually pick up.” But not yet.

Making matters worse — or at least opaque — in this bucolic burg is the fact the realtor cartel stopped counting.

For some reason (they blame the IT guys) the Niagara Association of Realtors ceased publishing stats months ago. This coincided with a significant slide in the market, which would make a cynic wonder if the house-floggers are in no special hurry to find their password or pay the Cogeco bill and get back online.

I put this to the boss, Lisa Taylor: “Some agents and investors feel they are ‘flying blind’ at a difficult time without this input. What’s going on? When will data flow again?”

Crickets. Seems they’re comfortable keeping us ignorant. All we know is that in the first three months of the year, it was a disaster. Detached home sales down 38 per cent. Townhouses off 48 per cent. Unloved condos crashing 54 per cent.

What’s the status of real estate in NOTL now?

There are 359 properties for sale. Fewer than 50 are condos. Overall, it’s an expensive place to buy into. More than 60 per cent of all homes have an ask of over $1 million. In fact, one in four are priced at $1.5 million or above. Almost 70 places cost in excess of $2 million.

Affordable? Ha. Fuhgeddaboudit. Just 27 properties (most of them condos) are on the market for $500,000 or less. That’s about 7 per cent of all listings — which may surprise folks who once thought half a million dollars was, like, a lot of dough.

Let’s do the math.

The average house in Virgil, for example, is $1.3 million. With a 10 per cent downpayment ($130,000 cash) and land transfer tax figured in ($27,500 — ouch), a couple would need to borrow $1.193 million. At current mortgage rates that’s a monthly of $6,730, plus property tax, utilities, cable, insurance and enough scotch to forget you owe $1.193 million.

This also requires a household income of $245,000. That’s double the Canadian average and qualifies to be in the top 4 per cent for income. It’s also swamps the average NOTL family income of $126,800.

So if the locals have a hard time buying here, who is?

Not enough people, clearly. It’s a tough gig for the house-sellers now. But those who do buy likely come from the urban east and move to NOTL with equity.

That means they skew older (no surprise there — hang around the post office and count the white hairs). Also, with scant entry-level affordable homes and even fewer rentals, young families get scarce. All made worse as smaller starter-type homes are snapped up by investors for Airbnb income.

Consequently, NOTL remains one of the few towns where unhosted, lucrative vacation rentals haven’t been banished to allow for long-term tenants.

Local politicians were slated to have a staff report on the issue by now but — like the realtor statistics — poof. Real estate values stay aloft. Buyers stay indebted. The renters stay out.

We can do better.

Garth Turner is a NOTL resident, journalist, author, wealth manager and former federal MP and minister. garth@garth.ca