When people talk about Muskoka they tend to say “magical.” How else, Esther Zuckerman asks, to describe a 2,500-square-mile stretch of Ontario with more than a thousand lakes, where you can ride a Jet Ski to a Pilates class? Torontonians have vacationed there forever. Now the rest of the world has found it on television.
Three shows, one region
“Sterling Point,” a teen drama set on a fictional Muskoka island, went to the top of Amazon Prime Video’s charts this month. “Summer House Canada,” a Bravo spinoff, is filming its first season there. In “Heated Rivalry,” the gay hockey romance everyone is talking about, the lovers escape to a “Quebec” cottage that is actually on Lake Muskoka. That cottage, at Walker’s Point, is now nearly fully booked for the rest of 2026, its rental manager says, and the owner has not opened 2027.
The nickname is “Hamptons of the North,” and the celebrity ledger supports it: Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber own there; Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds and the Beckhams have been spotted. The shores of Lake Rosseau are called Millionaires’ Row and Lake Joseph Billionaires’ Row. Ritz-Carlton Residences opened on Lake of Bays last year with prices from about $6.5 million.
| Signal | Number |
|---|---|
| Next-summer reservations, Cottage Vacations | Up 110% from this time last year |
| “Heated Rivalry” cottage, rest of 2026 | Almost fully booked |
| Ritz-Carlton Residences, Lake of Bays | From about $6.5 million |
| Old cottages available to film at | “So hard to find,” per the show’s creator |
The creator’s warning
Megan Park, who made “Sterling Point,” grew up nearby and pitched the show to Amazon with home videos from her family’s trips. Rewatching them, she noticed how crowded the place had become. “It was so hard for us to find an old cottage to film at because they are all being torn down and these megamansions are being built everywhere,” she says. Her plotlines turn on the tension between longtime locals and wealthy vacationers, and she admits the show may make that worse.
What a client should take from this
Three things. First, a second-home market that appears on three series in one summer and posts a 110% booking jump is at the top of its story, not the beginning; the buyers who do well in these places bought before the television crews. Second, a U.S. resident buying Canadian real estate steps into a different tax and estate system: Canada taxes non-residents on the sale, the estate side has its own exemption, and the two countries’ rules on a cottage passed to children do not line up. Our Canadian cross-border page covers the mechanics. Third, rent it first. The cottage on the show can be had by the week, and a week in August tells you more than a listing does.