April Sales: Flattening Out

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Westmount’s real estate market has flattened out in the past 6 months or so, uncertain which direction it wants to go in.

That’s the only conclusion that can be drawn about another change in direction, this time slightly upward, though it involves only six sales — very low volume for April, which in the past decade has averaged 14½ transactions. In fact, the 34 sales agreements so far this year is a record low, except for the catastrophic 2020 when the real estate industry was shut down like everything else in April.

The prices offer little to look at, either (from a Westmount point of view), the second month in a row where only two prices were over the $2 million mark, though the under-$2M prices ranged from $1,693,000 to $1,825,000, a very tight range. The biggest surprise involved a house on Victoria Ave. which sold for $3,600,000, almost double its municipal assessment, both the highest price and highest mark-up of the month. In fact, the next-highest mark-up was 6.9 percent — no, not 69 percent — with two of the six selling for less than the 2023 valuation. The one super-high sale pulled the average mark-up back into positive territory after two months where the average was a minus figure.

Two flats on St. Antoine St. made up the entire condo/co-op list for April, one of each and selling for $599,000 (the condo) and $367,500 (the co-op). In the first three months off 2023, six condominium sales averaged $940,833, two condos over $1 million and two selling for less than their tax value, an average 5.8-percent mark-up over valuation.

Four houses in Côte des Neiges just north of Westmount were sold in April, including three on Roslyn Ave. for prices ranging from $1,150,000 to $1,765,000. One sale each was posted for eastern Notre Dame de Grâce and the Trafalgar-Daulac area just east of the city limits. And offers were accepted for two apartments at Fort de la Montagne, 3577 Atwater Ave., in April.

The number of houses for sale in Westmount has increased from 99 in mid-April to 105 in mid-May, only one asking less than $1 million while two more are hoping for $25 million. The biggest price category now is between $2 and $3 million, with 34 houses on the block, compared to only 24 in the $1 million grouping. Four houses were rented in the past month, bringing the year’s total to 19, way above last year’s pace. There are currently 24 houses for rent in Westmount this year, five of those asking $10,000 per month or more. Only one has been rented for that kind of money, at $12,000 per month.

In April, the average time on the market dropped to 82 days compared to 142 in March; only one of the April sales took longer than 100 days to sell, compared to five of the nine March sales.

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