May Sales: Nine million for one house

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Yes, Virginia, there are high-priced buyers out there.

Announcement of the sale of a house on Braeside Place for $9 million offered hope that many Westmount homes on the market now for prices upward of $5 million might actually find buyers, though obviously the market is still quite thin. The next-highest sale prices in May included two for $3 million each and two more over $2 million, bringing the average price for 15 sales to $2,239,000. That average also included one sale for a house on Lansdowne Ave. for only $640,000 and another on Lewis Ave. for $999,000, meaning this May was the first month since May of 2018 to tally more than one transaction under $1 million. One house sold in February, 2018, for $579,000, but otherwise we would have to go back to August, 2016, to find another house price lower than $640,000.

The average mark-up over valuation in May was 42 percent, about the same as in April, with individual mark-ups between 16 and 65 percent. The last time a Westmount house sold for less than tax value was in March, and before that in June of 2018. Three houses sold for more than their asking price, and five sales were double-ended, that is, one agent served both to list the house and present a buyer. The average time on the market was 97 days, but in fact five houses sold in less than 10 days and another three between 10 and 20 days.

The market for condominiums was not quite as strong, with four sales in May added to nine in April which brings the total so far for the second quarter of 2019 to 13, with June still to come. Already this is slightly above average volume and the average condo price so far this year is $818,180; in the second quarter (again, so far) there were two sales over $2 million and two more over $1 million and the average mark-up was 35 percent, not quite as high as for one- and two-family dwellings.

Eight new sales in adjacent-Westmount areas show that, for some reason, buyers clearly prefer eastern Notre Dame de Grâce (basically, Grey through Northcliffe Aves.) to Côte des Neiges (Circle Road and Cedar Crescent areas), with 17 sales in NDG and only five so far in Côte des Neiges, while last year there were slightly more sales in Côte des Neiges (32) compared to NDG (28). In both cases the average price is between $1.2 million and $1.3 million, while the Trafalgar-Daulac area and the “Golden Square Mile” have averages over $2 million each, though only six sales have been recorded so far in the two areas combined.

The number of available listings surged to 117 as of mid-June, the highest number of houses on the market since mid-September of 2016, 23 asking more than $5 million and only seven less than $1 million.

Posted by andy Posted in: Monthly Analysis No Comments » May 2019

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