Princess Diana’s younger brother Charles Spencer is selling the Ontario cottage he bought with his Canadian wife Karen now that the couple are in the process of divorcing. When the 9th Earl Spencer, as he is formally styled through a hereditary peerage, bought an untouched forest and lavish waterfront mansion on Lake Rosseau, he was making one of Canada’s most high profile pandemic property purchases. It was that first autumn of COVID in 2020 and the fancies of rich people had turned to new and better leisure properties, somewhere they could escape the locked down city, unmask among family, and ride out the viral apocalypse in the land of the loon.
Prices rose accordingly, but that just helps the truly rich. So when gossip spread that the Spencers — Charles, 60, and Karen, 52 — had their eyes on this large overgrown patch of woodland between Rosseau and the smaller Silver Lake, with shoreline on both, in the heart of Ontario’s Muskoka cottage country, they seemed perfectly on trend. Now that the cottage and land are for sale again, in a softened market for recreational properties, the trend has come full circle.
It might even be starting again, driven by changes to the capital gains tax and lower inflation and interest rates. As the Financial Post headlined a recent report on real estate prices, “Canada’s cottage boom went bust. Are buyers ready to take the plunge again?” Spencer must hope so.
When he bought it in 2020, the cottage was listed at $8 million and.