“It was crushing. It was exhausting”
When Rebecca and Matthew Cragg sold their 3,000-square-foot Mooney’s Bay home — complete with cathedral ceilings, tatami rooms, and Japaneseinspired gardens — in fall 2020, they did it in the most mindful way imaginable.
Rebecca, 52, has run tea ceremonies and other Japanese-inspired events in their home for decades. Matt, 46, is a personal coach. Pandemic restrictions made it difficult for Rebecca and Matt to generate income at home. As well as hosting events and clients in the four-level 1960s house designed by Robert Campeau, the couple had used it as an event space, an art gallery, and an Airbnb rental, collectively known as Camellia House. It was also a beloved community hub. With COVID-19, all those activities became impossible.
Even these mindful professionals found the move very stressful — for a number of reasons. Since so many other homeowners were already renovating, the Craggs couldn’t find contractors to help with the repairs they wanted to make before listing the house. (In fact, in early 2021 the Ottawa Construction Association reported an overall increase in material prices, supply shortages, and an insufficient number of skilled labourers in the city.) These challenges forced them to enlist friends and do the work themselves. Another source of stress was Rebecca’s day job as a schoolteacher. It was summer when the Craggs decided to sell, and the fall return to in-class instruction was looming. “The timeline was really accelerated by the return to school and trying to teach in a pandemic while listing our house and doing all the renovations ourselves. It was crushing. It was exhausting,” Rebecca says.
When listing the property in September, they let potential buyers know they’d be happy to read letters of intent. Five of the eventual six bidders submitted such letters, introducing themselves and outlining why they thought the place was perfect for them. In the end, two bids were within $500 of each other. Rebecca and Matt carefully reviewed the letters, taking into account not only the bidders but also the existing fabric of their close-knit street, where they’d lived for 14 years.
“We grew to love the people that lived around us. Our neighbours were amazing. We told them, ‘We’re not selling to just anybody. We’re not going to sell to a developer. They’re not going to tear down this home and build another one. We’re really going to do the best we can for you guys,’ ” Matt recalls. But they didn’t have much time. “Not only do buyers have to move fast, but sellers also have to move fast because the offers are only active for four to six hours,” says Rebecca.
Once they listed the house, it sold within days. That left them with another immediate hurdle to overcome: finding a new home. For several months, they’d been searching for a house that met a few criteria: a well-maintained waterfront property, a vibrant community, and not too far from Ottawa. However, despite the fact that they watched the listings daily, almost every likely candidate had been conditionally sold by the time they spotted the notice.
Fatefully, they made a spur-of-the-moment decision while driving through a rural area east of Ottawa. They tweaked the search parameters on their real estate mobile app and were alerted to a three-season cottage on the Ottawa River between Rockland and Wendover. It wasn’t an area they knew, but they decided to check it out and immediately realized they’d found their new home.
“Almost miraculously, impossibly, we found and bought our next house within six days of the sale of our first house,” says Matt. There were no competing bidders, and the couple took possession in December 2020.
The property was radically different from Camellia House. Just 1,000 square feet, it was in excellent condition but not yet winterized. It wouldn’t
have running water in the wintertime, since the Craggs couldn’t find a contractor to install a heated water-line cable before the ice set in. So they put Rebecca’s collection of Japanese tea kettles to use melting snow for their camping shower and scooped water from a bucket to flush the toilet. Rebecca says it wasn’t that bad. “Humans are so adaptable.”
Matt agrees. “I don’t love not having a regular shower, but we know that there is going to be an end and this all was done for a much more important reason.”
The Craggs did get a bit of a shock when they discovered the cost of electricity. Even though the house had brand new insulation, the half-dozen baseboard heaters contributed to a Hydro One bill that regularly topped $300 a month. Their solution came by way of a $5,000 propane fireplace.
On the bright side, the move did have one immediate economic advantage. “Almost every piece of financial stress has been evacuated because we’re mortgage-free,” says Rebecca. She and Matt also remark on the community vibe, which they say is similar to that of their old neighbourhood.
Their new home is too small for all the activities they once ran from Camellia House, but that was part of the plan.
Says Matt: “It’s a change in lifestyle, as we had thousands of amazing people through our home during our time there. And while we’ll miss that, we’re also taking some time to slow down the pace.”