Renovated to flip, the house in Old Town has been officially listed for sale more than 200 days now.

Not so good, since the average DOM (days on market) for properties in Niagara-on-the-Lake is about 60. A price well north of three million doesn’t help.

But wait. It’s actually been available for almost 600 days. Two years — a fact hidden by the way local realtors dish out information to prospective buyers. There’s even a warning on the official site of the Niagara Association of Realtors.

Don’t trust our days-on-market stat, it cautions: “It does not include Cumulative Days on Market (CDOM), which account for prior listings of the same property that may have been cancelled, expired, or re-listed. As such, DOM may not represent the total time a property has been publicly available for sale.”

Truth be told, properties in much of NOTL are having a hard time attracting offers, which may explain such hidden bits of data.

It’s the same almost everywhere, but especially in a place like this where the average price of about $1 million ranks us up there with godless Toronto and flaky Vancouver.

After all, we’re not exactly diversified when it comes to jobs, or housing. Anything relatively “cheap” gets swallowed whole by our local cabal of short-term rental czars. That will not change until council does.

Now did you notice the interest rate news this week?

Right. There wasn’t any. The Bank of Canada rate is stuck in the same spot (2.25 per cent) and economists forecast no change through all of 2026. In fact, one bank (Scotia) says we should expect two rate increases to pop next summer and autumn — which would mean an end to current mortgage rates hovering around 4 per cent.

It’s not the news realtors wanted to hear. Six months ago the buzz was that the cost of money would cascade lower next year and we’d actually have a vibrant spring market — the first since 2023. But forget it.

Our central bankers worry Trump-tariff pricing could start pushing inflation aloft again next year. And while recent jobs numbers have been better, the GTA still has a 9 per cent unemployment rate.

If AI lives up to its billing, a lot more people might find themselves out of work because of large language models, generative programs and robots that never take vacations, bathroom breaks or bitch about the boss.

Here’s the paradox, though.

Real estate prices have come down. Mortgage rates fell meaningfully in 2025. It costs about 24 per cent less to finance a house than it did a year ago. Thirty-year mortgages have come back.

There is a ton of inventory to choose from. No bidding wars now. No blind auctions. No multiple offers. Sure, overpriced homes will continue to sit, but there are lots of properties now priced at 2022 levels, getting no action. Sellers are anxious. Many are willing to deal.

This should be the stuff that a property market revival is made of.

But not so fast. We have a deficit in confidence.

The latest Leger poll shows 34 per cent of us think the economy is OK, while 59 per cent say it’s poor.

Almost half believe things will get worse from here. That’s despite recent rosy economic numbers (GDP) and employment stats, which surprised experts. In fact, the jobless rate nationally fell in a single month by an amount that has rarely been seen. Wages are rising 50 per cent faster than inflation, to boot.

So logic says people should buy. Emotion says whoa. And the property market goes skunky.

“For sellers, this is the time to price ahead of the market — not behind it,” says head realtor wizard Lisa Taylor. “For buyers, this remains a window of opportunity where conditions are tilted in your favour.”

In other words, why wait? You’ll probably outlive Trump.