Canadians are increasingly putting the ‘remote’ in working remotely
MONTREAL — The telecommuting revolution envisioned by futurists, in which vast numbers of workers eschew their daily commute in favour of working remotely from home, never quite turned out as predicted.
However, a growing number of Canadians are taking the term “working remotely” literally, leaving the hustle and bustle of city life behind to work from their cottage or winter home down south, says a real estate expert.
“To the extent that that expands further, I think it will further enable the larger trend of working from places that you like,” said Brad Henderson, president and CEO of Sotheby’s International.
For many, that means avoiding the summer commute to cottage country.
Many are opting to take their profits from selling their home in the city and relocating to a property near a lake while perhaps maintaining a condo in the city.
He’s seen interest across the country from Montrealers relocating to the Laurentians or Eastern Townships, Torontonians heading to Muskoka, Collingwood and the Kawarthas, and Western Canadians choosing Banff, Canmore, Whistler and Kelowna.
Chris Van Lierop and his husband and business partner, Tim Wisener, took it a step further by relocating their home and design business to Fenelon Falls in the Kawartha Lakes area.
The pair has changed their focus from designing city homes to helping city folks build cottage retreats. They made the move last September after constantly prolonging the time they spent at the cottage.
“Eventually we just decided that we think we can make a go of our business up here and why not just stay at the cottage,” he said.
Internet is the No. 1 issue people ask about when planning to work from a cottage, says Jim Pine, chief administrative officer of Hastings County and co-lead on the nonprofit Eastern Ontario Regional Network.
“There’s still areas where there are challenges for people to either get a line of sight signal even on satellite. When you’ve got trees and stuff in the way, it makes it a bit of a challenge.”
The Federation of Ontario Cottagers’ Associations recently sponsored a survey that found that 28 per cent of respondents currently work from their waterfront communities. Nine per cent work remotely full-time and 70 per cent do so occasionally. Of those who don’t work from their waterfront communities, 37.5 per cent would consider doing so.
The largest barriers they identified were access and cost of the internet, distance to clients and the lack of social infrastructure.
About one million of Canada’s 12.6 million households owns a second home.
Statistics Canada doesn’t track the number of people working from their cottages, but the share of non-farming Canadians working at home has remain unchanged since 1996 at just over six per cent.