July Sales: Volume is (still) the issue

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Just four more Westmount home sales were negotiated in July, a record low for the month, matching the record low volume in June — also four — and extending the very low volume to three months, when 15 total sales were posted after 18 sales were negotiated in April alone. The average humber of sales in July (going back to 1986) is 11.6 and for the three-month period the average is 43.5, so agents have a long way to go to catch up to the “typical” mid-summer volume.

For Montreal the volume has dropped by almost half since April, so the trend in Westmount reflects the trend for all of Montreal, though the very low volume makes any comparison of price movement difficult to assess. The top price in July was only $2,750,000, lower than the adjusted average price pf Westmount homes for the month; the lowest price of $1,350,000 was the only one below $2 million, thus showing the difficulty developing statistics with such a low number of sales.

Interest rates started climbing in April, and removal of the mask mandate offered some hope that the pandemic was coming to an end and that home offices and/or more living space in homes could become a thing of the past. The market is still in a “transition” mode,” not quite sure what shape it might take in the coming months.

The same might be said of Westmount’s condominium market; in fact, no condos sold in July and only one co-op apartment at 3 Westmount Square, though two other co-ops, one at 3 Westmount Square and one at 300 Lansdowne Ave., were posted as having been sold in June.

Only four adjacent-Westmount sales were reported in July, including one house, one condo/duplex and one share of a duplex, all in the Côte des Neiges area south of Queen Mary Road, and one house in the Trafalgar/Daulac area just east of Westmount.

Posted by andy Posted in: Monthly Analysis No Comments » July 2022