July: Summer Slide

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by Andy Dodge, CRA

(NOTE: The following article relates to offers to purchase Westmount residential dwellings which were reported by the local real estate agents as having been accepted in July, 2007. Because they are not final registered sales, the addresses and prices cannot be made public, but give a good idea of current
trends in local real estate activity. The graph on page xx offers a picture of these trends over time.)

Prices and volume of Westmount real estate sales both were down in July, and in fact only one sale has been reported for the past two weeks of the month, as buyers and agents took a break, though there are still buyers looking for property.

Still, five more sales topped the $1 million mark, bringing the 2007 total to 49 sales above that mark, compared with 50 such sales in all of 2006. So even if the average price of the 11 sales dipped below $1 million and the adjusted average reached its lowest level since last December, there is still plenty of indication the year is going to be a record year. A summer slide is normal as some sellers get desperate to unload their properties which did not move in the spring market, but things generally pick up in the fall. What is perhaps more noteworthy is how powerful the market was in March, when the “typical “ Westmount house had a price of more than $1,250,000.

The range of prices in July went from $512,500 to $1,620,000 and only two of the sales were for less than the 2007 municipal evalution, but the average markup was a modest 14 percent and the highest was only 37 percent, about where the average was back in March.

Three condominiums sold in July, two in former duplexes and one in a St. Catherine Street apartment building, for prices between $320,000 and $600,000. All sold above municipal evaluation, and in fact the average markup of 15.4 percent brings the market for condos in line with the single-family market, having lagged behind the residential market during the first two quarters of 2007.

If things were lagging in Westmount, though, they were dead in adjacent- Westmount. No sales were recorded in Notre Dame de Grâce east of Decarie Boulevard, nor any in Côte des Neiges south of Queen Mary Road. Just east of Westmount, one house sale was reported and two condo sales, a fiveplex in Shaughnessy Village and a vacant piece of land on Saint Sulpice Road.

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