November Sales: Yes, Virginia, the Market is Sliding

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Like the little girl who sought the truth about the existence of Santa Claus, Westmount homeowners, hearing about the sliding real estate market in cities like Toronto and Vancouver, wondered if the same is happening locally. Indeed, it is true: while the rising interest rates mean less to buyers in Westmount than, say, in Dorval or Côte St. Luc, buyers who have been building equity in order to be able to buy that Westmount house are beginning to feel the pinch, and climbing the ladder is becoming more and more difficult.

The average adjusted price of Westmount’s “typical” house dropped in November below the $2.3 million mark, after peaking in May at $2,834,000. In May, only seven new sales agreements were negotiated, compared to an average 15 in the first four months of the year. While the first four months of 2022 all included double-digit volume figures, the highest monthly number since May was eight, and the average monthly number is 6.4 sales. Thus, the “seller’s market” which had been climbing almost steadily since May of 2020, has now turned into a “buyer’e market.”

The latest count for mid-December shows 99 houses listed for sale, down just one from a month ago, but numbers not seen since August 2020, when agents were figuring out how to sell houses during the original pandemic scare. The number of houses for rent has also soared, with 33 now on the market compared to only 12 last spring. Another 30 houses have been rented this year, at rates from $3,210 to $14,000 per month; actually, this is down from 40 houses rented in 2021, but the number of new listings has soared from 11 available for rent in May, to 30 in mid-December.

Adjacent-Westmount does not appear to have picked up the slack, with only four homes sold in October and November, all in the downtown area, for prices ranging from $805,000 to $2,200,000. Only condos and co-ops — including several shares of duplexes — sold in those two months in eastern Notre Dame de Grâce or southern Côte des Neiges.

For the next few days, forget about the graph. Have a Merry Christmas and a wonderful holiday season.

Posted by andy November 2022

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