Ottawa Real Estate Statistics: May 2014 in Review
by Dave Williams

For those following the Ottawa real estate market market this year it’s been a slow climb.  For the last 6 months we’ve seen a slight decline in sales and prices, which is completely expected following so many great years of growth.

This month we saw some changes, you can read the full Ottawa real estate market report here, starting with a decent increase in the average sales price of residential homes which I attribute to the increase in inventory and time on the market.

With homes taking an average of 69 days to sell, and over 6,500 homes to choose from there is a good chance where every a buyer is looking there are several good choices and the balanced market is providing a few more days to think about it before putting in an offer.

While chatting with some colleagues this morning I pointed out this is a good thing for home sellers.  A Buyers default when making an offer is “how much can I save”, especially in and area of town they might not be familiar with.  In a situation where homes are selling quickly they feel pressured to make an offer fast, however given a few days to become comfortable with the idea of making an offer and time to research what reasonable prices in the area are, these same buyers are presenting stronger offers netting the sellers more money when selling their homes.

Meanwhile in the condo market sellers are rejoicing at the 7% posted growth in average prices marking the first time in the last 6 months that there was year over year growth.  Some of this can be attributed to a larger number of high end condos that have sold recently.  There are 5 $1.1M to $1.45M sales attributed to May and if you look at the whole year so far  there were 5 sales for over $750,000 up to April 30th, and 7 last month in May, leading me to suspect there was a pent up demand for quality high-end condos that changed with the weather.