A Look at Just Home Sales in Ottawa, May 2013
by Dave Williams

There’s been a lot of talk in the last week of the drop in home sales in Ottawa, lead primarily by the condo segment, so to get some perspective I thought why don’t we just take a look at the residential home sales and what their numbers tell us.

  Sales

In May 2013, the Ottawa Real Estate Board members sold 1473 residential homes, 3.6% less than the record breaking all time high of 1528 in May of 2012.  While there is definitely a drop here, the fact that May 2012 represented the most residential homes sold by the Ottawa Real Estate Board in a month in the last 4 years leaves me skeptical to call it a definite drop, the previous all time high was April 2010.

Verdict less homes are selling. (Records are hard to break, keep at it guys.)

Prices

Homes sold last month averaged out to $394,331 a solid 2.33% increase over $385,348 in May of last year right along a normal rate of inflation but nowhere near as big a jump as we were use to in Ottawa real estate.

Home price increases are leveling out to match inflation rates.

Time to Sell

The average time a listing took to sell, that sold in May 2013 was 38 days, an increase of 5 days over last year although the quickest average time for a home to sell so far this year.

Homes are taking longer to sell.

Inventory

The number of residential homes on the MLS® system reached an all time high of 5904 in May 2013, 14.7% higher than the previous year.  2942 of these listings were brand new to the market this May, also representing the highest numbers of listings added to the MLS® in a month in recent years.

There are A LOT of homes for buyers to choose from.

All these factors add up to the market shifting in favour of the buyers for the first time (as a whole) since 2006.