The hot real estate market and a house fire in Chatham-Kent are both complicating a Tilbury couple's plans to move to the Merlin-area.
Stacey Morrison and her husband Don recently sold their house and were planning to move into a home on Middle Line in the first week of July. That idea went up in smoke when the house burned down Sunday evening.
Morrison says now they're scrambling to find a new place with enough space for their three-person family, their two dogs, and their pet iguana because they need to move out by July 15.
"The people who bought our house texted and said they heard the news, but unfortunately, they already sold their house too, so now they're locked into an agreement also," says Morrison. "If I were to back out of this, I'm sure there would be a loophole and I would pay a penalty, but then I would be affecting two more families and I'd rather move into an apartment than do that to them."
Morrison says with fewer homes on the market in Chatham-Kent right now, her options are limited.
"We're getting to the point where because there's nothing to rent in Tilbury... we even looked at some rundown place that we thought maybe we could just buy and reno," says Morrison. "I would have never sold our house, but I was thinking that we had this place, so that was OK -- I guess now we'll suck it up and go from there."
Morrison's struggle to find a home in the area is backed up by recent numbers from the Chatham-Kent Association of Realtors (CKAR) as well.
In its latest report, which was released earlier this month, CKAR said there were about 530 total active listings at the start of the month, which is the lowest level of active supply since 1994.
