March Sales: Highs and Lows

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The range of sale prices in March’s Westmount real estate market is extraordinary, with three of a dozen sales over $6 million each and two under $1 million, the first time since May 2019 that there have been so many sales under $1 million.

Top price in March this year was $9 million for a mid-level Westmount mansion, which also represented the highest mark-up over city valuation of 60.8 percent. It was followed by sales chiming in at $7,500,000 and $6,860,000, and three more over $3 million. On the other hand, the two lowest were $700,000 for a house on Burton Ave. and $900,000 for another on Abbott Ave. The Burton sale also represented the biggest mark-down, -30.2 percent.

With all these extremes, the average price ended up at $3,460,833, the highest raw average monthly price in Westmount’s history. The average mark-up over valuation was 15.1 percent, showing a gradual improvement during this year, with averages of -4.6 percent in January and +1.8 percent in February. In March, there were six mark-ups and six mark-downs. Houses spent an average 152 days on the market, with a median selling time of 99 days, much more both as an average and a median from February, but including two houses which were on and off the market for well over a year each.

One more condominium sale at 200 Lansdowne Ave. in March rounded out the first-quarter figures for condos, with seven sales averaging $1,498,357 for property with a tax value of $1,332,386, thus a 12.5 percent mark-up or about the same as for single-family homes. The first-quarter results show the third-highest price for a penthouse condo in Westmount’s history, at $4,600,000 in January. Only one of the first-quarter condo sales involved a made-over duplex on Grosvenor Ave., which went for $785,000; the rest were in apartment buildings.

The adjacent-Westmount market has not been quite as exciting as in Westmount proper. Thus far this year the Côte des Neiges district north of the city limits has logged seven sales with an average price of $1,604,286, while the Notre Dame de Grâce district just west of Westmount has seen six sales averaging $1,589,833. The real disappointment has been for houses in the “Golden Square Mile,” where three sales this year have averaged only $1,141,667 and the average price:valuation ratio has been -34.7 percent.

As of early April, there are a stunning 113 houses now listed in Westmount, the most since late 2019, and the number now listed at less than $1 million has climbed to two, again the highest number since early 2020. The biggest category increase has been those asking between $2 million and $3 million. The two top asking prices in Westmount are both $15,500,000 each, while one on Redpath Crescent is asking $25,900,000 and another in Senneville is going for $19,000,000.

Posted by andy Posted in: Monthly Analysis No Comments » April 2024

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