January Sales: Not Much of a Start

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The year 2024 got off to a slow start with only four Westmount sales logged by local agents and only one those selling above the municipal valuation. This is the tale of a market that dropped badly when the pandemic first struck in 2020, then climbed with the rest of the market by offering extra bedrooms and home offices for a changing population. That “bubble” receded by mid-2022, then struggled back last spring but dropped off as mortgage interest rates successfully tempered the real estate market.

Among the four home sales, the prices ranged from $1.7 to $4.2 million, the latter offering a mark-up over the city tax value of only 1.3 percent. The others all went below valuation by as much as 15.4 percent; making this the fourth consecutive month that the ratio has been negative. Though there may be a slight upward stagger in the January figure, low volume often distorts the figures around the holiday season. What remains to be seen is whether the new year brings a strong increase in prices, as has happened in earlier years, or whether the slide which started last August will continue.

Agents are bringing new product onto the market in a hurry — there were 89 listings for Westmount houses as of mid-February, an increase of 15, or 20%, in a month. While still none are asking less than $1,000,000, there were more listings in each million-dollar category, and even three more house rentals than were being offered a month prior.

Only two condominiums sold in January, one a penthouse at Château Westmount Square, 4175 St. Catherine St., which brought an offer of $4,600,000, the other in a smaller St. Catherine St. building, for $590,500. The huge discrepancy between the two makes it impossible to compare; they will be drawn into a first-quarter time period once the February and March sales are added.

The only January sales in adjacent-Westmount came in the Côte des Neiges area north of the city limits. Two houses there sold for prices of $820,000 and $1,930,000, and a duplex-type condominium there sold for $687,000. We keep watching the sales on Roslyn Ave. between the city limits and Queen Mary Rd.: after nine sales were posted during 2023, three more houses were listed at the time of writing.

Posted by andy January 2024

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