The Ottawa re-sale real estate market saw spectacular record-breaking sales numbers in August, far outpacing the numbers we saw in August of 2015 and contributing to what’s been a record-breaking year for units sold in the Ottawa area. The Ottawa Real Estate Board announced the good news in a release on its website (www.oreb.ca).
The Board also reports that with the number of listings declining, buyers have fewer options and Ottawa has the potential of entering a seller’s market soon. If that trend continues, that could be good news for those who do have homes on the market or are considering selling a property in the Ottawa area.
As for prices for the month, the average sales price of a residential-class property sold in August in the Ottawa area was $389,786. The average sales price for a condominium class property was $272,166.
Members of the Ottawa Real Estate Board sold 1,484 properties in August of 2016 through the Board’s Multiple Listing Service system. That’s up 16.3% over the 1,276 properties that were sold in August of 2015, the Board reports. It’s also considerably above the five-year average for August sales in Ottawa, which is 1,265. In August, sales usually start to decline as we approach the fall season, but that wasn’t the case this year, as the numbers show.
It’s part of what’s been an impressive year for re-sales in the Ottawa market.
“To date, this has been a record-breaking year for units sold,” Shane Silva, the President of the Ottawa Real Estate Board, says in a news release.
“The year started off a little sluggish, but as soon as April hit, we were either breaking records or outpacing the year before considerably. Not only are we up 16.3% over last year, this has also been the best August on record ever for OREB members, blowing the average for August sales out of the water. This is atypical of August, when units sold normally start to decline approaching the fall.”
“Units listed in both residential and condominium property classes continue to decline, as well as active listings at the end of the month,” Shane Silva says. “These numbers suggest that buyers have less options when looking to purchase, with the potential of Ottawa entering into a seller’s market soon.”
If that happens, it means the market would favour sellers, because buyers have fewer properties from which to choose and can not be as picky as they could be when there are a high number of properties on the market.
The sales in August included 295 in the condominium property class and 1,189 in the residential property class.
As for sales prices, Shane Silva says “average sale prices have been steady all year. This past month, however, there were six more properties sold in the $1 million plus range over last year, a possible explanation for the bump in average sales price for both condo and residential properties.”
The average sales price of a residential-class property sold in August, at $389,786, represented an increase of 2.5% over the numbers for August of 2015. The average sales price for a condominium class property, at $272,166, represented an increase of 11.1% over August of 2015.
As it always does, the Board cautions that average sales price information can be useful in establishing trends over time but should not be used as an indicator that specific properties have increased or decreased in value. The average sale price is calculated based on the total dollar volume of all properties sold.
The highest number of properties sold in Ottawa in August were two-storey and bungalow residential homes in the $300,000 to $400,000 price range. That was followed by one-level and two-storey condos in the $200,000 to $300,000 range, the Board reported. If you compare those numbers to prices in Toronto and Vancouver, they again show how affordable the Ottawa market remains for those who are looking to enter the real estate market.
If you’re interested in buying or selling, I’d love to hear from you and chat about the current Ottawa market. You can reach me through my website, at www.nancybenson.com, or call me directly at 613-747-4747.
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