Dows Lake Condo Boom; a Comparison of Sales and Prices
by Dave Williams

More Condos seems to be the order of the day around Dows Lake as project after project is unveiled.  What a great place with scenic views, amazing restaurants and culture, but what about the real estate, is it selling?

Right now, June 11th 2013 there are 65 Condos for sale around Dows Lake from the Glebe through the Glebe Annex and down to Bayswater.  They range from $288,900 for a 1 Bedroom new construction to $2,285,000 for a 2980 square foot penthouse condo at SoHo Champagne, 18 of these condos are new constructions to be completed this year or in 2014.

So far this year 23 condos have sold in the Dows Lake area and 4 more have conditional offers in place.  The sales have ranged from $232,500 up to $717,500 and averaged out to $415,221 and took an average of 93 days to sell.  The good news is the 4 conditional sales only took an average of 46 days to sell which will being that average down once they become firm sales.  So far this year condos have been selling at an absorption rate of 5/month.

Looking at the same date range last year, 2012, 25 homes sold in the same time period (5/month) ranging from $213K – $1.28M, selling in an average of 86 days and for an average price of $460,488.  In all of 2012, 50 condos sold in 84 days for and average of $436,065.

So far this year condos are taking more work and time to sell and looking at the chart above you can see there has been a decline in the number of MLS® sales over the last two years.  *Important reminder, builders only typically put their inventory on the MLS® system as they near completion, so it is speculated that while the picture looks bleak, there is likely to have been substantial unrecorded sales in the new build segment.

Here is one of the clearest pictures of Ottawa’s condo market, a market some call supersaturated and others insist is right along intensification curves of all major cities.  What do you think?