September/October Sales: Strength and Weakness

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Real estate agents appear to have been very late — perhaps because of the Jewish holiday season — in posting sales for September, and what we had announced as a reasonably strong 9-sale month doubled to 18 sales, two of which were in the $4 million range and three more in the $3 million range. The average mark-up had been announced as 34.9 percent; that has now ballooned to 45.4 percent, with one house on Oakland Ave. selling for more than 2½ times its 2017 municipal valuation.

That explosion appears, however, to have dwindled as September moved into October, where agents (so far) have posted only five sales, all between $1,000,000 and $2,525,000, with the average mark-up on 2017 valuations moving back down to 35.8 percent, though because the volume was so weak, the adjusted value went up. The adjusted value of the “typical” Westmount house has been over $2 million since May last year and is now pushing $2.4 million.

Six condominiums sold in September and four more in October. The September sales rounded out the third quarter of 2019 which saw a total 15 sales for an average price of $898,933, two sales over $2 million but then no others higher than $1 million, with an average mark-up over 2017 valuation of 35.1 percent. In October the average price dropped to $773,500, only one sale was over $1 million and that was only $1,116,000; the average mark-up was half of the previous quarter, at 15.0 percent.

Adjacent-Westmount areas were almost busier than Westmount proper, with six single-family homes and a duplex selling in September, then nine more single-family cottages selling in October. Prices are up substantially year-over-year in most areas, especially the Circle Road-Cedar Crescent district north of Westmount. Finally the average sale price of one- and two-family dwellings is more than $1 million in every area of adjacent-Westmount.

As we move into the holiday season, the number of homes available for sale on Westmount is down slightly from a peak of 132 in September to 128 by mid-November, with most of the drop in the $3 million-plus categories, while the number asking less than $3 million stayed fairly static. The number of houses available for rent jumped from 24 in mid-October to 29 a month later, though only one new rental was announced by local agents in the previous month.

Posted by andy Posted in: Monthly Analysis No Comments » October 2019