March Sales: Bursting the Bubble

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Westmount’s version of the “pandemic bubble,” whereby many homeowners were buying into the local market to provide more space for a home office or kids moving home, appears to have fallen off completely by March this year, dampened by higher interest rates and overall lack of enthusiasm.

Eight sales were posted by local realtors in March, ranging in price from $1,375,000 to $2,300,000, though one of three late postings for February reported a price of $7,650,000 for an upper-Westmount home, the highest price so far this year.

In March, four of the eight posted sales were for prices below their 2023 valuations and the average price was $1,761,250, only the third time since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020 that the raw average price dipped below $2 million. Once the prices are compared to the municipal valuations and the monthly extreme sales are removed from the mix, the adjusted value of the “typical” Westmount house has now dropped below the average for March 2020, just as the pandemic shutdown virtually closed the real estate market temporarily. The near-steady climb to May 2022 represents the pandemic “bubble,” which is now completely depleted in the space of 10 months.

Three condominium sales in March brought the first-quarter volume to six sales, the lowest number of condo sales in the first quarter since 2009. The range of prices was between $655,000 and $1,801,000, with only two over $1 million. Unlike the single-family trend, only two of the six were less than 2023 valuations (and one of those was under by a mere $400), though the average mark-up was only 5.8 percent.

Adjacent-Westmount districts logged six house sales in March and 13 so far this year, evenly distributed between the districts and ranging from $1 million to $5.600,000, the latter for a house on Trafalgar Road just east of Westmount.

By mid-April, the number of houses on the market in Westmount jumped to 99 from 92 a month earlier, climbing back to the number of active listings before the holiday season. The new listings are mainly in the $3 million to $5 million price range. The one house we reported last month as asking $795,000 is now down to $690,000, the only Westmount house asking less than $1 million. Now, it seems, rentals are becoming the hot item, as agents report 15 rentals so far this year, compared to only six at the same time last year. This year’s houses have been renting at rates from $3,995 to $12,000 per month; as we write this, 28 houses are up for rent, six of those asking $10,000 or more.

Posted by andy Posted in: Monthly Analysis No Comments » March 2023