September Sales Westmount Market Report

Mark-ups dipped below parity but volume remained strong in September sales, boosting the annual volume to its highest level since 2007. With two sales in the range of $2.5 million to lead the way, prices ranged down to $825,000 but the average price closed in on $1,575,000 in 11 sales posted so far for September.

The total price was just 0.3 percent below the 2014 municipal valuation (which still applies to property for the remainder of this year, though the 2017 valuation roll is now available). One of the main reasons involved a property on Upper Lansdowne Ave. which sold for just over 50 percent of its municipal evaluation; without the extremes, the average mark-up comes to about 10 percent and the adjusted price remains over $1,600,000 for the third month in a row. In fact, only three of the 11 sales were under their tax value and climbed as high as 48 percent above valuation.

The average days on market fell, too, offering a hope that vendors might be able to move their houses faster than they had in previous months; except for June, the 115-day average is lower than for any month in the past year.

Only one more condominium sale was posted in September, but this brought the total for the third quarter of 2016 to nine sales, exactly the same as for each of the first two quarters. The sale price of $1,475,000 involved a duplex-type condominium, one of the top prices for these converted duplexes in Westmount’s history.

Five new sales were added to the “adjacent-Westmount” list in September, including one house just north of Westmount, one just west and two just east of the city limits as well as a triplex in the Shaughnessy Village area, all of which brought over $1 million except for a house on Circle Rd. that settled for $920,000. The highest price in adjacent-Westmount, in fact, was for a luxury condo in the new “M Sur la Montagne” project, which drew more than $3.6 million.