August Sales: Topsy Turvy

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“Don’t believe everything you see,” part of a quote attributed to Edgar Allan Poe, can be applied applied to the mid-summer Westmount real estate market, which can be just as wild and scary as anything Poe wrote. The raw June average price was $2,400,000, and prices averaged 16.7 percent below valuation, with six of the eight sales below valuation. The updated July list, with four sales added to the four that we talked about last month, showed a raw average price of $3,110,000, with an average mark-up over valuation of 23 percent and all but one of the sales above valuation. Then in August, for which we have six Westmount sales, the average price is a humble $2,083,333, with three of the six again below valuation and an average just four percent over tax value. Because of the way we combine months to create larger samples, the modest month of August shows a serious hike in prices, awaiting a better sense of direction come the September figures.

When we say the August figures were modest, we mean that the highest price was $3,100,000 for a mid-level house that sold in two days, for 23 percent more than valuation, also the highest mark-up. Prices went down from there to $1,375,000 for a house on “the flats” in western Westmount, representing a mark-down of 19 percent, the largest of the month. Three of the six were for less than $2 million.

Only one more condominium sale was posted as having been negotiated in August; added to three sales in July, the average mark-up for the third quarter of 2024 comes to a very strong 30.2 percent, with all of the sales in a very tight range from 26.9 to 33.0 percent, and three prices between $545,000 and $650,000, the fourth price at $1,350,000. This after local agents had posted 15 sales in the second quarter of the year, running as high as $2.3 million for a 1 Wood Ave. suite, or $4.6 million for a penthouse at Château Westmount Square, 4175 St. Catherine St., topping seven sales in the first quarter of the year.

One more sale was posted for a fifth-floor apartment at 3 Westmount Square, which along with its residential brother tower has established co-op status for most of the apartments. So far this year five sales agreements have been settled there, two in 2 Westmount Square and three in 3 Westmount Square, for prices ranging from $465,000 to $2,700,000. They are among 15 co-op sales reported so far this year, including four sales at 376 Redfern Ave. and two more at 4444 Sherbrooke St. Two others are shares of duplexes or triplexes.

Adjacent-Westmount areas posted five sales in August, including two on Northcliffe Ave. in Notre-Dame de-Grâce, one more on the Roslyn Ave. extension in Côte des Neiges and one in the Trafalgar-Daulac area of Ville Marie, all for prices ranging from $1,255,550 to $2,215,000. So far this year agents report some 42 houses sold in the areas surrounding Westmount for prices ranging from $750,000 to $4,145,000.

There are still 132 houses on the market as of mid-September, about the same volume since mid-May, plus or minus one or two. The number in the $3 million to $4 million range has dropped by three, from 18 to 15, with numbers increasing in most other price ranges, except those over $10 million, whose figures dropped from 11 to nine. In the past month four more houses have been rented in Westmount; at 36 as of mid-September the number is just the same as last year. We can expect four or five more house-rental contracts before the year is out.

Posted by andy August 2024

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