July Sales: Higher and Higher

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Prices moved higher, sales volume so far this year is the strongest it has been in the past four years, but the Westmount real estate market is suffering from lack of supply. As houses get sold there is no new inventory to replace them, thus forcing prices even higher as buyers resign themselves to paying more and more for the privilege of owning a house in Westmount.

The value of Westmount’s average house jumped $50,000 in the space of a month, rising steadily for the past year to $2,650,000 since suffering from the initial uncertainty of the pandemic. As families became more home-oriented and buyers opted for that extra bedroom to be an office or rec. room, those options turned into cold cash. Meantime, the number of available listings dropped from 85 to 66, mainly in the $1 to $2 million category where the listings dropped from 24 to 11. No doubt many owners took their houses off the market for the summer, and may re-list them in September, perhaps for even higher prices.

The eight July house sales ranged from $1,500,000 to $5,800,000, only three of which were over $2 million, and though the average was $2,469,000, the median price was $1,965,000. The average mark-up over municipal evaluation was 26.1 percent, down from the previous month, but not enough to stop the upward flow of prices.

The average mark-up was actually higher for the four condominium sales posted in July, at 37 percent, way up from the 22.5-percent level in the previous quarter. Whether this means interest in condos is improving remains to be seen; the four all sold in a fairly tight range of mark-ups, between 30 and 41 percent, while they ranged in price from $475,000 to $1,308,000.

One more house was rented in July, bringing the total number of rentals this year to 32, compared to 21 rental postings at the same time last year, though that was still part of the pandemic “pause” which had affected the real estate market generally. Of the 32 rented this year, four were for more than $10,000 per month. While the number of sale listings still available has dropped dramatically, so, too, did it drop among rentals, particularly from the early spring months when 24 houses were available; the summertime offers only 11 houses for rent, in a range from $3,000 to $20,000 per month.

Posted by andy Posted in: Monthly Analysis No Comments » July 2021