Heads up.
Quick note before we start. I am not a Realtor, a mortgage broker, an accountant, or a financial advisor. I am just a newcomer to Winnipeg logging what I am learning as I go. Nothing in this post is professional advice. Talk to a licensed pro before making decisions with your money.
This is the question I asked myself before I bought my duplex, and it is the question a lot of people ask me now. Short answer, from where I am standing today. Yes, it still works, but the margin is thinner than it was a few years ago and the property you pick matters a lot more.
Why Winnipeg is still interesting to me
Compared to Vancouver, where my family has been trying to get established for years, Winnipeg prices for small multifamily are on a different planet. A duplex here can still be found under four hundred thousand in the neighbourhoods I was willing to live in. In Vancouver that number does not buy you a parking spot.
Rents have been climbing. Vacancy is low in the neighbourhoods people actually want to live in. That combination is what makes the math work at all.
What is harder now
Interest rates are higher than the numbers you see in older blog posts and YouTube videos. A payment that used to be one thousand four hundred is closer to one thousand nine hundred on the same loan. That eats into your cash flow.
Older character homes need work. Roofs, furnaces, knob and tube, foundations. If you fall in love with a place and skip the inspection you will pay for it later.
The really good deals move fast. If a property is priced well and the numbers make sense, other investors know too.
What still makes deals work
Buying a legal up down duplex where both units can rent for something reasonable, not just one of them.
Paying attention to boring stuff like utilities. A place with separate meters is worth more to you than the same place with one meter for the whole building.
Being okay with living in the smaller or less nice unit for the first year or two. That single decision often turns a break even property into one that actually reduces your housing cost.
Where I have seen numbers not work
Anything where you are counting on short term rentals to make the math work. The rules keep changing and I do not want my mortgage payment resting on a bylaw.
Big beautiful century homes in trendy neighbourhoods that are priced like a single family home but only produce one small basement suite of rent. On paper that is a house, not a house hack.
Fixer uppers when you have no renovation experience and no cash reserve. I looked at a few and walked away.
A final note
So does it still work. For me, yes. I would not tell someone to rush into it. I would tell them to run the numbers on the specific property in front of them, be honest about repairs and vacancy, and only move forward if the math still works when you assume things go a little wrong.