April Sales: At a Crawl

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The normally-strong spring real estate market in Westmount remained at a crawl in April this year, with only nine sales posted by local agents, the same number posted in March. So far this year we have recorded 38 home sales (February counted for 16 of those), the lowest number for the first four months of the year since we started keeping monthly figures in 1986 — the previous low had been 44 in 1994.

The problem was supply at the beginning of the year, when only 45 houses were listed for sale, but that has nearly doubled in the past month or so. Still, 81 listings as of mid-April and 82 in the middle of May suggest — as we reported last month — a very late spring marketing season. We have also noted an increase in the number offered for rent, including at least three houses which were sold in the past year, and others which were on the market but could not sell, so are being put up for rent instead.

And while the average price of the nine home sales in April was only $1,665,222, markups are pushing the price of the “typical” Westmount house over the $2 million mark for the first time in history. The adjusted value is now up 15 percent year-over-year, and the $1.7 million average price in four months this year is well ahead of the $1,570,871 average price for all of 2017.

For the second month in a row, there were no sales posted under $1 million. The prices in April ranged from $1,075,000 to $3,650,000, the latter selling for a two-percent mark-down from city valuation, the only mark-down of the last two months. The biggest mark-up in April was 48 percent.

Only four condominium sales were transacted in April, ranging from $610,000 to $1,650,000, and one co-op apartment sold for $470,000. The number of sales in adjacent-Westmount areas almost matched the number in the city itself: four in southern Côte des Neiges, three in eastern Notre Dame de Grâce and one on Parkside Place ranged in price from $590,000 to $1,314,000. The eight adjacent-Westmount sales averaged $1,077,550.

Posted by andy April 2018

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