The weather may have been cool and wet, but the industry saw Ottawa housing sales surge in May 2017.
“May was sizzling hot for Ottawa new-home sales,” says Cheryl Rice, Ottawa president of PMA Brethour Realty Group.
And for the resale market, activity was so robust it surpassed the record for highest unit sales in a single month, “blowing the previous record out of the water,” Rick Eisert, president of the Ottawa Real Estate Board, says in a release.
PMA saw a “record-breaking increase” of 29.3 per cent in new-home sales for the month compared to May 2016 – reporting 570 sales versus 441, which is also well above the five-year average of 443.
New-home sales were also more than 20-per-cent above those in April, when there were 469.
“The demand for new homes in Ottawa doesn’t appear to be waning.”
“Toronto buyers, investors, and consumers anticipating an increase in interest rates continued to be the dominating drivers,” Rice says, with single-family homes and especially townhomes being the most popular. “Product was flying off the shelves for many new-home builders… The demand for new homes in Ottawa doesn’t appear to be waning.”
For instance, Minto’s Quinn’s Pointe sold out of all but one of its singles and did sell out of towns at Avalon West, until the next release. eQ Homes had a successful launch of its condo apartments in Greystone Village, selling 22 units in May. And Richcraft had a sharp increase in singles and condo apartment sales, respectively tripling and quadrupling its April sales numbers.
“It’s been crazy the last two months,” says Richcraft’s marketing manager, Shawn Bellman. “We’ve never done this amount of sales, ever.”
Surge in sales
The surge in sales was just as strong for the resale market, which saw a 19.9-per-cent jump in May over May 2016. There were 2,300 properties sold through the board’s Multiple Listing Service, compared to 1,919 the previous year, and well above the five-year average of 1,946.
Condo sales led the way, jumping more than 40 per cent, and Eisert says the condo market has really helped to strengthen the whole market over the past several months.
Condo sales also picked up significantly on the new-home front, with 90 condo apartments sold last month compared to 52 units in May 2016. Given the prolonged slump in the condo market over the past few years, Rice notes “this is good news for condo builders, but only time will tell if condo sales will turn a corner in 2017 or 2018.”
Average prices up
For resale, May’s sales included 444 condos and 1,856 other homes. The average price for a condo was $270,993, an increase of 2.3 per cent over May 2016, and for other homes averaged $436,625 (up 7.4 per cent).
The board also notes a marked increase in the sale of higher-end homes, especially those over $1 million, where the number of sales have almost doubled over May 2016.
And we’re still trending towards a seller’s market, thanks to lower-than-normal inventory levels and listing averages for May, more multiple-offer situations, and fewer days on market, Eisert says, although prices remain relatively steady.
“If we were in a true sellers’ market, we would expect to see a much higher spike in prices.”
