May Sales: Trying to Get Back on Track

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Westmount’s real estate market tiptoed back to life in May, with seven single-family sales in a month which averages 19, and two condominium sales after zero in April.

Prices appear to have dipped, but this may be because much of what sold in May involved properties which had been on the market for months (in two cases more than a year). The average mark-up over municipal valuation was 12 percent, while for the year as a whole the mark-up is 16 percent. With two extra sales in April (since our last report) the volume for the month leapt to three, at an average mark-up of 15.9 percent, so the May averages are only slightly lower.

Still, agents are encouraged but cautious, with sets of instructions on how to show a house, who can enter a house and what homeowners can do to display their house. Negotiations and offer exchanges then continue on-line, so the human contact is minimal. And of course most listings offer “virtual tours” of the property, so the customers can get a fairly good idea of a house before arranging for a visit.

Of the seven sales in May, three were over $2 million but the highest price was only $2,300,000; one more sold for $990,000, only $5,000 less than the asking price after 18 days on the market and 10 percent less than municipal valuation, so obviously a “motivated seller.“ Both the price and mark-down represented the extremes in their category, while both the highest price and the highest mark-up (32.8 percent) involved the same house.

The condominium market is still dead, it would appear, with only two sales in May and none in April, compared to 18 condo sales in the second quarter last year, 21 the year before and 24 in the second quarter of 2017. Adjacent-Westmount house sales were only slightly better, with three May sales in eastern Notre Dame de Grâce and one in Montreal’s “Golden Square Mile” district. Interestingly, of 11 sales in adjacent-Westmount areas since the shutdown began in mid-March, five of them have been at or above asking price. For Westmount, one sale on March 18 sold for $2,100,000 while asking $2,065,000, the only post-shutdown Westmount sale to sell above asking.

While the end of two months of inaction should be expected to bring a flurry of new listings to market, the number increased only four between mid-May and mid-June. There are now 100 homes for sale in Westmount, none under $1 million, 20 over $5 million and three over $10 million. The past month saw a surge from 7 to 13 house rentals so far this year in Westmount. There are 27 houses listed for rent, three of those over $10,000 per month.

Posted by andy Posted in: Monthly Analysis No Comments » May 2020