Three years ago, Kate and Rob Harcourt found themselves rethinking their careers and browsing real estate listings, like so many of us at the height of the pandemic. When they stumbled on a cottage resort near Sault Ste. Marie for under $300,000, they jumped in the car the next day to have a look, put an offer in that morning, and raced home to sell their house in Collingwood. A month later, they were living in a tiny cottage and preparing for a mountain of renovations. How’s that going? Do they regret it? Listen to find out.

Kate and Rob Harcourt are the Co-Owners of Staying by the Lakeside Cottages. Check out their Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram accounts for photos, guest stories, packages, and availability.

Learn more about tourism investment opportunities in Northern Ontario at invest.destinationnorthernontario.ca. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

About the Destination: Northern Ontario podcast

If you came across a real estate listing for an affordable cottage resort deep in the boreal forest, would you be tempted to buy it?

If the answer is yes, then the Destination: Northern Ontario podcast is for you. By the end of this five-part series, you’ll learn everything you should know before buying or starting a tourism business in the north, and hear stories from people who’ve walked the path before and would do it all over again.

The podcast is hosted by Michelle Samson and produced for Destination Northern Ontario by Storied Places Media. Learn more about our podcast production services for economic development organizations at storiedplaces.ca.

I've been saying it and I'm gonna keep saying it.

Algoma is the new Muskoka.

It might be five years, it might be eight, 10 years, but this end

of the world is gonna blow up

Hi, I'm Michelle Samson host of the destination Northern Ontario podcast.

This series is for the dreamers who want to start a new life somewhere

simpler, somewhere that for the price of a condo in downtown Toronto,

you could buy a cottage resort.

That would be your business and your home.

The trail to your new life isn't necessarily paved and easy, but it has

been walked before with great success.

In this episode, we meet Kate and Rob Harcourt, the owner operators

of staying by the Lakeside cottages.

This gem on Gordon lake, which is about 50 minutes east of Sioux.

St.

Marie has eight, two bedroom cottages on 12 acres with 1300 feet of waterfront.

Kate and Rob bought the property three years ago at the height of the pandemic.

Like so many of us during that time, they found themselves rethinking their careers

and seriously, considering new options.

Before this move.

I had been working in marketing I had been off for a little over

two years with a back surgery.

So I was just pretty much recovered from that.

And with, with the pandemic, I would've been due to.

Go back to work right after everything shut down.

So I wasn't able to go back.

I was a fairly disgruntled worker in my previous job, At that time, I

was in direct purchasing for a large, um, automotive, uh, safety manufacturer.

I'd never worked in a big group like that before.

I'd always been self-employed

I always wanted or always thought that, uh, a camp or a, uh, like a small

resort like this would be a great way to retire because it keeps you busy.

You've always got something to do.

just by chance I happened to be looking through the MLS map

And this one caught my eye.

the only reason why this one caught my eye was, in the little caption listing

that comes up it said 16 bedrooms.

And I looked at the list price and I went 16 bedrooms for under 300,000.

So I clicked on it and, uh, that's when I realized what it was.

I got an email from Rob the day he found this subject line of the email was

retirement and it was this listing and it was like, oh, that looks really cool.

Let's go check it out.

The price point was ridiculous.

So we we jumped in the car the next day and drove up from Collingwood and, uh,

had a look at it and ended up, uh, putting an offer in that morning and then raced

home and sold our house in Collingwood.

And the funny thing is, Collingwood had changed from the beautiful little

resort town that we first moved up there with our children and we skied

and we had the bay and everything.

And it was wonderful.

The Collingwood, you know, partially because of the pandemic, but also the

boomers just pouring out of Toronto.

Like it was unbelievable for a small town.

It had six major subdivisions on the go, which is, I follow real estate and

that's not usual to be growing that fast.

So that was part of the reason why we left and moved up here.

I was thinking, let's just get the heck outta Dodge where it's nice and quiet.

But then when we got up here and I realized the potential

this thing had, I was like, wow.

I've been saying it and I'm gonna keep saying it.

Algoma is the new Muskoka.

We moved into Collingwood just before Collingwood fricking exploded.

And we had no idea.

We just happened to move into that neighborhood.

Same thing, I think is, is happened here.

We found this place, we moved here, and it's about to go, it might be five

years, it might be eight, 10 years, but this end of the world is gonna blow

up because Southern Ontario is full

algoma is the new Muskoka.

You heard it here first, folks!

So this was happening in the summer of 2020 when the pandemic drove people

out of cities and set the suburban and rural real estate markets on fire.

Thanks to all those pandemic buyers and boomers, Robin Kate were able to sell

their house in calling would quickly.

But it wasn't without some personal challenges.

It was crazy.

We didn't have enough money down to, to, to seal up the deal right away.

So we had to, uh, run home and sell our place.

We threw it on the market and held our breath cuz um, there was a

lot of action on this property.

There was a lot of groups in interested in picking it up and we sort of, charmed

the previous owner and got lucky and, uh, ended up selling our house in time.

We kind of joke about in our family, uh, 2020 is the year of the

pandemic and the year mom and dad kicked everybody out of the house, we have four

kids, they were all in their twenties.

But everybody had still been living with us in Collingwood.

Um, so it was like we came home from looking at this place and it was

either you're moving up north or you've gotta find somewhere else to be, they

were very supportive, I will say.

It wasn't like, mom, what are you doing?

It was good.

The only difficult part was we were mid swinging in a number of

different renovation projects.

So when we got home, the agent here was phony.

Do you have your property listed yet?

Are you listed yet?

We're like, no, we've still got back splash to do.

And anyway, it took us, I don't know, two weeks maybe to, to

finish up what we were doing.

Got it listed and sold firm all within a month.

Yeah.

And we, and the fun thing was we moved out of a big house, like

3000 finished square feet into.

Less than 500 square feet.

We're living on the camp right now and the cabins are smaller than the

living rooms in our previous home.

So it made the, made the move a little more challenging.

We ended up having to buy a sea container.

We figured out the cheapest way to do it would be to buy a sea container and

leave all our stuff in the sea container because these cabins had cutler.

They had like everything.

We didn't need to bring anything with us.

So moving and keeping all your stuff at the same time is not as easy as you think.

So, um, we still have a, a sea container and one of the cabins full of our

stuff, like just as warehousing.

yeah, I was gonna ask about, how you made the

decision to live in the cabins.

Did you a separate property to live in, or was the plan just always

to move into one of the cabin.

The previous owner, they lived in one of the cottages for the 25 years.

They owned it..

So that was always the original plan.

There's so much work to do here when the work is done and things

are running a little more smoothly and perhaps, you know, we've

hired staff, then we can consider.

Because of the previous owners living here.

We, I didn't even blink an eye.

I, that was my plan was to live here.

Like Kate said, there was so much work to do.

You know, why would you live anywhere else?

Plus, we're a limited capital, so I didn't want, we don't wanna

spend money on a second property.

We're all in on this, If it doesn't fly, it's, uh, we're gonna have to,

we're gonna have to figure something out

after they sold the house and bought the camp.

A new journey began.

The property was only $300,000 because it was getting run down.

Thanks to previous jobs in both the construction and hospitality

industries, Rob saw the potential, but understood that it was going to take

a lot of work to get a guest ready.

It was obvious the camp had been left on its own without

maintenance for probably a good five or six, maybe seven years.

So, there was a lot of maintenance to catch up on and that the damage

that had occurred from lack of the maintenance Had to be done.

And then it was basically just updating them.

We've been updating kitchens, bathrooms.

My background in the hospitality industry has helped us quite a bit too, because

I have, uh, focused on making the bathrooms, the kitchens, and the bedding,

the cleanest out of everything, because that's what grosses most people out.

The property needed some work Beyond the cabins too.

They sold us a 75 foot dock with the, uh, with the camp.

When we purchased the place, it was November, so we couldn't really

check out the, the waterfront as to how it, was it deep?

Was it shallow?

Was it this, that Right.

We had no idea, but we wanted to have a dock ready for the next year.

And then the, the young real estate agent, she said, oh,

there's your dock right there.

I looked at it, I said, that's not a dock, that's a burn pile.

But, uh, the funny thing is I know nothing about docks.

Like I said, I can build you a house, but I never built anything into the water.

So we ordered quite expensive dock.

They are quite expensive.

But, uh, literally two days before the dock was to be delivered to the camp,

I was outside building a, a cradle for, for firewood and I was using the old

material outta the old dock and I pulled my tape measure out and I measured

a piece of the dock and I went and I counted all the pieces and I went,

wow, that's not 75 feet, that's 150.

So they had the dock, the length of the dock totally wrong.

So our first year it was like we had this beautiful big aluminum dock out in

the lake and it was 18 inches of water.

At the end of it, you couldn't even bring your boat up to it.

It was so shallow.

So we added, what did we have, 40, 40 feet the next year and we've gotta add

like another probably 40 this year.

Yeah, that was a, that was a good one.

What was your strategy to get ready for guests

and what was your timeline?

It was so overwhelming trying to figure out.

Which

cottage was the most work, what was the least?

Work and prioritizing between all these buildings that are the same.

You'd walk into one and you'd be, wait a minute.

No, I'm in the wrong one.

Sorry.

That's something you, we didn't say they all eight cabins are identical.

Like Absolutely.

Floor plan.

They're like, they were punched out in a factory, so Yeah, they look exactly the

same on the outside and on the inside.

Yeah.

So, um, it took us a little while and we went through each one, figured out what

work had to be done, which was going to be the easier one, the harder one.

Initially we thought, oh, we'll start with the hard ones.

Knock those off.

And as time's creeping by, we're like, oh no, we better start with the easier ones.

Get those going.

For example, it took my daughter and I three days to go through and just

inventory like, how many forks do we have?

And then figure out, what do we need each cottage to have?

And Rob's underneath them and doing all this stuff, figuring

out what work needs to be done.

Um, so we picked a schedule.

I started listing.

Things for rent on Airbnb according to our schedule.

And it went pretty good for the first couple of cottages.

The third one was okay.

By the fourth one, we're like scrambling to get stuff finished, which we did.

So our first year we weren't able to open until mid-June of 2021.

But yeah, it's still difficult to prioritize cuz we still have

four more cottages to do work on and we change our minds.

So you did manage to get the first four ready for June, 2021.

How was your occupancy for that season?

With the pandemic just ending, as soon as we were listed,

we were just flooded, so now we were a little low on our pricing.

so I think our occupancy was slightly better in 2021 than 2022,

but we've made significantly more money in 2022, which works out.

But still, this past summer we're only at about 50% occupancy

when Kate was making reference to the fact that we were underpriced,

um, it was, it was a learning curve for us once we came up here because

we kept calling it a fishing camp.

And up in, in this part of the woods, a camp is a camp.

Like you don't have hydro, you don't have plumbing, you have a, you

know, an outside Johnny on the spot.

That sort of thing.

And so people weren't getting what we were saying to them, like

we weren't making sense to them.

And then we also weren't charging a high enough price cuz we didn't think what we.

Was that special and then the people up here are like, oh no, you know, you've

got indoor plumbing and electricity and, and you know, it's insulated.

Like, that's great.

So it took us a while to, to figure that out.

And so our pricing has, yeah.

Has been coming up the whole time because we're realizing

we have a lot more to offer.

Do you have a sense of why you weren't able to fill the other 50%?

While we've been working on actually getting the cottages ready to rent, we're

relying solely on Airbnb for marketing.

we just took another course on Airbnb, uh, Like the last two

years have are unprecedented.

Like, it's, it's been crazy.

Everybody's trying to.

To get their feet back on the ground and go, okay, the world's back to normal.

I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that.

And it's getting better.

But those first two years were, you know, that was a shot in the dark.

For us, for sure.

But there are definitely some things we've identified.

So for example, we allow one night stays and we get a fair amount of that.

So we don't want to not do it.

But it also, if you've got a couple of one nights, it's hard to fill

in in between those sometimes.

Most of the resorts up here are, they only allow full one week rentals.

Saturday to Saturday.

The previous owners here did the same thing, so, Maybe we could list

several of the cottages for week only.

Leave a couple of them for shorter stays, that kind of thing.

But yeah, that's something that we're really starting to think

about and analyze and decide how we're gonna go forward from here.

I'm curious if you have any guests who used to stay at the

resort, you know, back before you owned it, and if they've come back

. Kate: Yes,

The previous owner left us her recipe card boxes full of

everybody who has ever stayed here.

I'm working up to figuring out how best to contact some of these people.

But in the meantime, as soon as we, within a month of us, not even a month

of being listed on Airbnb, people found us and said, oh, is this that resort?

And they were booking right away.

I think Renata had a little bit to do with that.

We had one gentleman, he was 36 years old and he was crying on the phone when

he found out we were open again because he'd been coming here since he was six.

He'd been coming here for 30 years.

So he was, he and his wife and child.

Their uncle or something.

Anyways, they came this just this year, right?

Their

Yep, this

past

summer.

Past summer, yeah.

And

they're booked again.

yeah.

And we have a few, we have some other people that are, are Americans that

are like familiar with this lake.

They used to stay at a, a cottage farther down the lake from us

and rent it from old friends.

And that cottage changed hands and the people that purchased that

cottage is actually the local mailman.

And so he referred those people to us.

And so now we have what, two, the two sisters is it, that are coming up?

They've booked spring and fall, and they've booked for next spring,

so they'll be here twice a year.

The majority of the people that were coming before we owned the place were from

the US and some of the border crossing issues prevented some of them from coming

last year and even the year before.

But they keep trying.

And we have a lot of them booked for this summer, and some of the ones who came last

summer are booked again for this year.

So it's great.

Did you ever consider keeping the old name to , help

those people keep finding you?

We actually got in a fight about it again this morning.

not a joke.

That's not a joke.

Oh,

We really did think about it and actually I mention it in all of

our marketing so that if people are Googling, hopefully some of this will

be coming up or even in Airbnb, if you do a search for the old name, it

will come up cuz I have it mentioned.

But yeah, we did change the name.

didn't mean to, uh, cause any strife

. Kate: No, no, no.

I wanted to ask about your amazing ratings.

you know, You've got all these five star reviews and super

host status and all of that.

Are you doing anything in particular to wow your guests?

We clean like crazy.

There's no doubt these places are spotless when you get here.

We've upgraded all the linens, like in interior wise, we've

done the very important things.

The kitchen, the bathroom, the bedding, refinish, the floors, new

area, rugs, futon, mattress covers.

outside

the view.

I mean, it's beautiful here and we're really nice people.

people feel very welcome.

A lot of them say that, and you know, we give them firewood.

We'll help them start a fire if they've never done it before.

Or if they wanna try kayaking, we'll help them.

We wanna make sure people have a good time when they're here,

Those other four cottages, are they still, getting renovated,

have you gotten them up and running?

One of them is almost done and we're actually staying in it right now.

It just needs a couple little things.

Rob's working on the very worst one right now that we kind of left to

the end we should have seven of them ready to go by the end of the summer

and we'll be in the eighth one unless we find somewhere to move off of here.

I can't see us moving outta here for probably another year or two.

What we did was we bought a camper, big camper trailer.

And so in, in the warmer months, we move out into that camper and, uh, we

rent the cabin instead of living in it

. And then when the fall comes, because

aren't really established that well, we move back into the, one

of the cabins for the colder season

Do you have a five year plan, or just keeping your eye

on, uh, these first steps first?

Oh, we have plans.

yes, we have another seven acres over here.

I want to do some, uh, water management.

It's a big marshy bush.

I want to dig some trenches or canals through it.

And then I want to build boardwalk system through it and put in hopefully

15 yts or those like dome things.

Like I'll do like the, I want to do like four or five of the, like the

tiny houses with the bedroom on the second floor along the waterfront.

So you have the view of the lake.

But then the other ones I'll, I'll do the domes where you, you can just

lay in bed and look straight up.

You know what I mean?

Cuz you're in the bush.

Right.

But we need to build, a decent main building.

We need to put in, uh, public washrooms, you know what I mean?

That sort of stuff.

To be able to maintain those cuz those wouldn't have plumbing

or bathrooms and stuff and it wouldn't have a septic system.

But yeah, I can spend lots of money.

That's what the other thing we're doing is, is we're starting to source

government funding for accommodations.

Some of Rob's drive to build new units is because he learned

through a DNO report, the pan Northern accommodation sector study and gap

analysis that Northern Ontario has lots of tourism demand, but not

enough places for visitors to sleep.

Since this gap has been identified by the region as a challenge for

growing the tourism industry.

Kate and Rob are very wisely looking into government programs that can

help them be part of the solution.

That said since government programs can be tricky to find and understand.

They went looking for help they started by registering for the

northern ontario tourism summit

I don't know if you've ever tried to look up government programs.

They're hard to find.

But we heard about the summit.

We registered.

As we're watching this, I just, I couldn't write fast enough.

It's like this, this is answering every question I've had since we moved up here.

it took a little time to sort of sift through that information.

Got in touch with, Um, tourism Excellence North and the Fast

Track to Success program.

So we just had that completed two weeks ago and now, so now we're

digesting that information and now we know better what's out there, what

they do, what we need to do, there's definitely stuff out there for us.

If someone is considering moving up here and opening any sort of tourism

business, reach out to DNO immediately.

If I had known that coming up, I would be light years ahead in

terms of knowledge So, yeah, do it.

I, uh, I used to work in economic development myself

and it's great to hear that you're engaging with it cuz that's all the

economic developers are trying to do.

Like, They want to get the attention of the very business,

business owners to say, here are all the ways that we can help you.

We called Gord,

That would be Gordon.

who you may remember from episode one of this series

We sat on the phone with him for two hours.

He couldn't tell us enough and it almost felt like, wow, I'm kind of cheating

and getting the inside information here.

But he is like, no.

Like, we want everybody to know.

Yeah.

great.

That's where that conference was so valuable, the information.

Like I was just sitting there taking screenshot after screenshot

cause I can't write that fast.

. Gord was fabulous.

And uh, if this goes anything like has the potential to go, I'm

all about buying another one and then buy another one after that.

Why not?

Yeah, I think that's a, a perfect transition into my,

uh, , my last question, which is, you know, it's been two years

since you've made this investment.

how are you feeling about it so far?

Oh, there's nights I lay in bed,

can't sleep at three in the morning going, what in the heck did we do?

I really miss our kids.

I'll get that out there.

So some of that is, is personal emotional stuff.

Obviously everything's not perfect here, it's like, oh, this happened and how are

we gonna fix that and blah, blah blah.

But 99% of the time though, you just look out the window.

It's like, that's why we did it.

It's beautiful and it, the thing that I would say that I have to really.

Remind myself is when we're looking at the business, we're

seeing all the, the problems and the things that are wrong, and

you know, the water's not deep enough versus Oh, what a beautiful dock

to walk out and have your coffee.

When I keep the perspective of a guest coming here, it's amazing.

And I would do it a hundred times again.

Next time on the destination, Northern Ontario podcast, we talked

to and Yella and Brian, another couple who bought a cottage resort.

They weren't really in the market for a property, but when the owners

of their favorite hunting lodge retired, they took a leap of faith.

Follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to make sure you

don't miss it while you're there.

We'd appreciate if you left a rating or review.

For more information on staying by the Lakeside cottages, check out the Airbnb

and social links in the show notes.

For more information on investment opportunities across northern

ontario visit the new dno investor website@investdotdestinationnorthernontario.ca.

The destination northern ontario podcast is produced by storied

places media and hosted by me michelle samson thanks for listening