April Sales: Ping

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“The market is so tight, if you strum it, it will give back a high ping.”

What surprises us even more than the straight-up nature of the latest graph — after the brief Coronavirus Crash — is the lack of inventory, which at last check offered 61 Westmount houses, down from 71 a month ago, from 96 in mid-May last year and 117 in 2019. Of the 61 available, exactly ten are asking less than $2 million, of course none asking less than $1 million, but there haven’t been any of those since last September.

The fact is, the 10 sales negotiated in April include one house that sold for $3,550,000, but none of the others cleared even the $2 million mark. Of those 10, four sold within 10 days of listing and the average for the month was 65 days. It is clear Westmount buyers are grabbing anything they can get for less than $2 million; in March, eight of 18 sales were between $1 million and $2 million, but the rest were higher The April group includes two sales above asking price; in March there were five. Though there was a dip in the overall average mark-up over valuation from March to April, removal of the extreme prices and mark-ups in the two months means the direction is still up, up and up. Because there was only one $2 million-plus sale, the total average for April was $1,818,800. Mark-ups ranged from 5.6 percent to 42.3 percent, averaging just under 25 percent.

Westmount’s condominium market appears to be taking some time off, with only three sales announced in April, all under $1 million. In the first three months of this year agents worked out 14 condo sales as high as $2,550,000, with an average mark-up of 23.3 percent. Hopefully the second-quarter market will pick up in May and June; so far the second-quarter mark-up just clears 20 percent.

The list of sales for adjacent-Westmount was very strong, especially the eastern part of Notre Dame de Grâce with seven new sales announced, including four over asking price with bidding wars galore. In Montreal’s “Golden Square Mile,” five house sales have been posted so far this year with an average price of $2,703,800 and an average mark-up over valuation of 74.6 percent, the highest average for any of the districts. Most of the other districts include average mark-ups between about 20 and 40 percent.

With the number of house listings dropping by almost the same amount as the number of sales in April, it is clear that very few new listings are coming on asking less than $2 million. The minimum asking price is $1,199,000; from there prices go to $27,500,000. Another 22 houses are available for rent, down from 31 at the same time last year. Already this year some 18 Westmount houses have been rented, including three at over $10,000 per month.

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