Greater Sudbury selling off some housing stock

Sudbury -

Greater Sudbury is looking to get rid of some of what's has been deemed surplus community housing.

'For Sale' signs have started popping up on 25 properties in New Sudbury and Chelmsford as city officials look to realign the stock to address current needs.

"Back in 2018, council approved our division to conduct a social housing revitalization project," said Cindi Briscoe, manager of housing services.

"We hired a company through the RFP process out of southern Ontario which came up to Sudbury and did some extensive background studies related to our social housing, which is now called community housing."

Briscoe said they found the city had a mismatch when it came to supply and demand.

"What we required to get through our centralized wait list was one-bedroom units; what we had a majority of was the three to four bedroom units," she said. "We looked at our centralized wait list, we had 80 per cent of individuals on the wait list requiring one bedrooms and our stock was actually at about 40 per cent."

The city has since been listing the properties, slowly, one or two at a time, as to not flood the market.

Easily identifiable by their trademark green doors, the homes have been going up for sale, many of which are going above listing price.

Todd and Andrea Hilton are the listing agents handling the sales through Sutton Realty. They've so far sold 18 of the homes that the city was looking to unload.

'Right now we have a surplus of homes -- there are fewer homes than there are buyers out there," said Andrea Hilton. "We are getting a lot of phone calls, with the surplus in buyers any home on the market is getting a lot of phone calls, so a lot of realtors including ourselves, are taking calls on a daily basis."

The couple said sales like this don't happen often.

"Our experience has been wonderful so far. The Greater Sudbury Housing Corporation has been fantastic to work for, they take care of these buildings," said Todd Hilton.

The sale of the homes comes before recently announced projects like the 14-unit complex at Sparks Street will be ready.

Briscoe said it's important to note no one was evicted and the sale of these homes doesn't affect the wait list. It's also allowing them to realign their goals a little quicker while saving money.

"So it will allow us to do the complete build at Sparks Street without having to secure a mortgage," she said. "By us selling off these scattered units and placing the money in our social housing capital reserve, it's allowing us to build this so there is no impact on the taxpayer."

The majority of the homes being sold are in Ward 8 Coun. Al Sizer's ward. Sizer, also the deputy mayor, said this move is good news.

"They were sitting there vacant and we were doing the maintenance, the heat and hydro and so obviously it was time to get rid of them so we'll replenish our stock," he said.

It also comes at a good time, financially speaking, for the city with realtors seeing record real estate prices.

There are still a few homes yet that still have to be listed both in New Sudbury and Chelmsford.