July Sales: How High is High?

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The tightest real estate market Westmount has seen in years is driving the adjusted price of Westmount’s “typical” house well into the $2 million range, though the highest price among seven one- and two-family sales in July was just over $2.5 million and that was the only sale over $2 million.

The average price of the seven sales was $1,613,143, the lowest raw average price since January when only four sales were posted. Except for the one 2.5 million sale, the others ranged in price from $1,125,000 to 1,870,000. One sale price was less than one percent higher than its municipal evaluation, but the others ranged between 19 and 44 percent higher than tax value, thus an average mark-up of almost 27 percent, up 3 percent from the previous two months which had been about the same.

The main problem is volume. On average July produces 11.8 sales, though in 2013 we only recorded six sales in July, seven each in 2010 and 2011. For this year through July, agents have posted only 83 sales, the lowest year-to-date volume since 1994, just before the last Quebec sovereignty referendum. Obviously market conditions are much different now, with Westmount’s super-high prices (relatively) preventing most families from even looking to buy here.

As of mid-August, the number of available house listings dropped to 79 from 85 in June, only two asking less than $1 million and three asking more than $10 million. Seven more house rentals were posted in the last month, for between $2,000 and $9,000 per month; six houses are asking $10,000 or more but so far this year nobody has agreed to that amount.

The condominium market appears equally tight. After a second quarter in which agents posted 21 condo sales, only two were added for July, one for $595,000 and the other for $1,850,000, which makes it difficult to draw any conclusions about the direction of that market. Suffice to say that the two sales averaged 23.9 percent higher than their municipal valuations, just about the same as the 24.3-percent average mark-up in the second quarter.

Two sales just north of Westmount and two more just to the east of the city limits rounded out the latest house sales for adjacent-Westmount, and the prices are generally up compared to last year. The area around the new MUHC super hospital is drawing a number of condominium buyers, and home sales in eastern Notre Dame de Grâce have seen the strongest price increases in adjacent-Westmount districts. The average house is selling for more than $1 million to the west and north of the city, more than $2 million east of the city limits and downtown in the “Golden Square Mile.”

Posted by andy Posted in: Monthly Analysis No Comments » July 2018