January Sales: Taking a Breather

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After a tumultuous pandemic year in 2020, it is not at all surprising to see Westmount’s real estate market take something of a breather in January this year, recording only seven sales averaging $2,122,857, with prices no higher than $2,900,000. The lowest price was $985,000, the first residential sale at less than $1 million since last August, when one house sold for $889,000.

The average adjusted price remained above $2.3 million for the fourth month in a row but may climb sharply in coming months as supply dwindles. It appears many homeowners are putting off decisions on whether to move — or where to move — until they know a little more about the future of the pandemic.

With a few late arrivals to last year’s list, volume for 2020 actually beat out the total number of sales in 2019 by two, recording 140 sales with prices ranging from $840,000 to $11,700,000 and a raw average price of $2,334,767, some 17 percent above the city’s valuation.

Then in January, two houses, one on Anwoth Rd., the other close by on Hudson Ave., sold for double their municipal assessments, while for three others the mark-ups were less than 10 percent, pushing the average mark-up for the month to almost 36 percent. Once the extreme sales are removed, the average melts down to 16 percent, more in line with the previous year’s average.

Only three condominium sales have been reported for January, in a very tight range between $700,000 and $808,000, two apartments and one in a converted duplex, two with mark-ups over valuation between 10 and 20 percent, the other selling way below its tax assessment.

Last year recorded only 36 condominium sales, the lowest volume since 2015, a figure which no doubt was influenced by the pandemic and the fear of shared living spaces. Condo prices improved to an average above $1,250,000 last year, and may be moving back toward the $1,050,000 level, where it had been in 2018-19; with only three sales it is still very early to spot a trend.

Adjacent-Westmount experienced a weak January, as well, with only one sale in eastern Notre Dame de Grâce, one in the “Golden Square Mile,” four nearby condominiums and one share of a duplex. Final tally of sales for 2020 shows that most districts had slightly fewer sales than the year before, but especially eastern N.D.G.where only 22 sales were logged in 2020, compared to 37 in 2019.

The number of available Westmount house listings grew from 51 to 64 by mid-February, but that number is still sharply lower than at the same time in 2020, when we tallied 97 listings. The latest asking prices ranged from $1,100,000 to $27,500,000; the biggest price bracket was for houses between $2 and $3 million (22, compared to 18 asking less than $2 million). There are also fewer houses for rent than at this time last year; already four houses have been rented in 2021, including one for $12,000 per month.

Posted by andy Posted in: Monthly Analysis No Comments » January 2021