U-Haul Chatham data shows continues to experience good growth

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Chatham continues to experience robust growth according to annual data collected by a North America-wide moving van rental company giant.

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The Maple City has been ranked the 13th top growth city in Canada according to the U-Haul data analyzing customer moves during 2021, a company media release stated.

This is despite a nearly 10 per cent decrease in do-it-yourself movers coming to Chatham in one-way U-Haul trucks compared to when Chatham was the ninth top growth city in 2020, noted the release. Departures also decreased by three per cent, the company added.

“Chatham is a smaller community with a very reasonable cost of living,” said David Anstett, U-Haul Company of Western Ontario president, in the release. “Housing prices seem to be the main generator of movement, and it’s much easier to purchase a home in Chatham. Plus, it’s a beautiful community with lots of water and lakefront properties. Its proximity to Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair makes it very attractive. It’s also in one of the warmest parts of Canada. ”

Across the region, Sarnia slipped from 10th to 16th and St. Thomas dipped from 13th to 14th in 2021, according to the annual U-Haul data analysis. Chatham-Kent also ranked higher than larger communities, including Vancouver, BC, Brantford, St. Catharines and Peterborough.

Business has been so brisk at the local U-Haul dealership at Maple City Storage in Chatham that it has earned monthly Top 100 Dealer in North America designation from the company nine times between September 2020 and September 2021.

“We’ve got more rentals coming in then we have rentals going out,” owner Richard Janssen said.

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He said the trend has been seen over the past few years, especially since the COVID pandemic started. People have said they’ve bought a home here because prices are more affordable and they’re looking for a smaller town to get away from a big city, he added.

Chatham-Kent being ranked near the top for growth is no surprise to municipal officials.

“We have significant growth and a lot of that growth is happening because of people moving to Chatham-Kent,” said Mayor Darrin Canniff.

He said 1,000 new housing units, including new homes and apartments, were created in 2021 and another 1,000 housing units will likely be built this year.

To put that in perspective, that’s a 2,000-person growth per year if at least two people were moving into each new housing unit, the mayor said.

Chatham-Kent’s director of community attraction and promotion, Audrey Ansell, said her department has been tracking the annual U-Haul growth report since 2016, adding the municipality has been in the top 25 for a number of years.

“It’s not surprising given what we’ve seen all around us from the resident housing growth activity in the community,” she said.

She also believes it’s a “reflection of Chatham-Kent being a desirable community.”

Ansell pointed to Chatham-Kent being listed as 27 ^th in the 2021 Maclean’s list of the best Canadian communities to live in. She noted such factors as quality of life, location, weather and amenities were used to determine the rankings.

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It is a benefit for Chatham-Kent to appear on these lists when people are looking to relocate to new a community, Ansell said.

She added it helps get the municipality on short lists that people make when considering where to move.

This often leads to the municipality being contacted via phone or through social media about the availability of co-working spaces, activities, and the presence of faith-based and cultural groups, she said.

The U-Haul statistics for 2021 show arriving customers accounted for 53.7 per cent of all one-way U-Haul truck traffic to Chatham, compared to 46.3 per cent departures.

“You expect flow in a community. There should flow – people moving in and out. It’s important that also happens, ”Ansell said. “People move on for all sorts of reasons.”

She said growth has definitely been noticed, citing Statistics Canada projections for the community has shown more adults younger than 40 are choosing Chatham-Kent as place to live.

“It’s not a retirement-driven thing. It is across all age cohorts, ”Ansell said.

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