January Sales: On Hold

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January often is considered a month “on hold” in Westmount real estate circles, as agents recover from a busy year and start preparing for another busy spring market, and this new year was no exception. Only four sales are posted (so far) as having been agreed to in January, though two more house sales were added to the December list. Of the four in January, all were above $2 million and only one sold above the $3 million mark; this is only the second month in which all the sales have been north of $2 million, after seven sales cleared that mark in October, 2022.

Three of the four in January sold for more than their municipal valuation, none higher than a 13.8-percent mark-up, and the fourth with an 11.9-percent mark-down, so the average of the four was only 6.0 percent, again indicating that we can expect little increase in tax values when the new valuation roll covering the years 2026 to 2028 is published this fall.

As our graph shows, 2024 was a rather rocky year with a bulge in mid-summer followed by a serious slide in the fall months. It turns out agents posted 140 sales during the year, way up from 114 in 2023 and 118 in 2022, but otherwise slightly below the 148.8 average volume of the past 15 years. The average mark-up over valuation in the first year of the 2023 valuation roll was 1.7 percent, then 7.7 percent in 2024, but these figures are far lower than the average mark-ups for the previous valuation roll (2020-22) when they came in at 17 percent, 32.8 percent and 36.3 percent, respectively.

Four condominiums — including one former duplex and three apartments — all cleared the $1 million mark in January; the lowest was the duplex-condo which went for $1,130,000, while the highest price was an upper-floor apartment at 1 Wood Ave. which sold below valuation for $1,925,000. Higher prices went for two high-rise apartments in Westmount Square, co-op apartments that sold for $2,250,000 and $3,546,000.

For 2024, the adjusted average for condominiums climbed to $1,350,345, up 2.7 percent from 2023, in a price range from $420,000 to $4,600,000.The highest mark-up among condominiums last year was 44.4 percent, the biggest mark-down was 26 percent, with an average for the year of 6.6 percent.

As we move into 2025, buyers are looking at 109 available houses of which 25 are asking less than $2 million and another 35 asking between $2 and $3 million. The lowest-priced house is asking $799,000 but it is lonely; only one other house is asking less than $1 million, at $999,000. Nineteen houses were listed for rent by agents in mid-February, the lowest number since the pandemic. Westmount tallied 48 house rentals at the end of the year, the highest number since we began keeping records in 2016, as was the number of rentals (8) over $10,000.

Only two houses sold in adjacent-Westmount areas in January, one on McDougall Ave. near The Boulevard for $1,535,000, the other on Vendôme Ave. above N.D.G. Ave., for $1,215,000.

Posted by andy January 2025

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