January Sales: Turning the Corner

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The normally-slow January in Westmount real estate repeated itself this year with seven sales of single-family dwellings and one duplex drawing an average price of $2,953,500 and a median of $2,700,000, including only two sales under $2 million with the lowest reported price at $1,918,000.

The market appears to be turning the corner, however, as four of the eight sales took less than three weeks to sell — at least one going for $100,000 more than the asking price and another selling for 2.5 times its municipal valuation. The latter sale pulled the average mark-up in the month to 40.5 percent, the highest monthly average since June of last year when buyer resistance to the high Westmount pricvews started to be felt. All of this awaits the normally-strong spring market, but of course there are many factors — pandemic recovery, interest rates, business investment plans and so much more — that can influence the local real estate market.

Supply, of courses, is another factor and the market is only just coming back from the holidays, with 58 home listings at last report while there were only 53 in mid-January. Of those, only 11 are listed for less than $2 million, with the lowest asking price at $1,089,000, while 17 are asking over $5 million, all the way up to $27,500,000.

Westmount’s home rental market is also off to a slow start, with only one rental posted by mid-February. That involved an upper-Westmount home which will be rented for $14,000 per month, the only listing asking more than $10,000 so far this year. By this time last year four houses had been rented, including one for $12,000.

The final figures for last year show a total 149 sales arranged by local agents, up from 140 in 2020 and 138 in 2019, with the average adjusted price for a Westmount house at $2,570,807, up from $2,264,691 in 2020. For those who want a point of reference, the adjusted value has doubled since 2009, tripled since 2002 and quadrupled since 2000, when the average Westmount house would have sold for about $645,000.

Posted by andy January 2022

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