(Montreal) The Montreal housing market shifted gears last month as sales fell 20 per cent year-over-year while active listings rose 37 per cent, the Professional Association of Quebec Real Estate Brokers (APCIQ).
Posted at 5:26 p.m.
Sales for the month of August were 2,681, while the number of active listings reached 13,715, the association said.
According to the director of the APCIQ’s market analysis department, Charles Brant, the direction of the market is experiencing a “drastic” change since the month of August is generally characterized by a lower volume of properties for sale than most other months of the year.
“Contrary to what we have been able to record for the past 20 years, the month of August that we have just gone through is the one that has seen the most sales since the beginning of the year”, underlined Mr. Brant in a statement.
Rising interest and mortgage rates are slowing the pace of transactions as inventory builds up, causing the market to rebalance, but more gradually than in other parts of Canada.
“The market rebalancing process is therefore underway. […]manifesting itself in a slippage in the ratio of sales to new listings and a rapid decline in the proportion of sales of properties concluded as a result of an overbidding process,” continued Mr. Brant.
“This situation inevitably leads to a drop in prices and the erasure of the excessive gains resulting from the boom at the start of the year and which were at their peak in the spring. »
As in recent months, the various sectors of the greater Montreal area have evolved at different rates, even if they have all slowed down. The North Shore experienced the smallest slowdown, with a 3% drop in sales on an annual basis.
Transactions on the South Shore, for their part, fell by 10%. But the declines in the regions of Vaudreuil-Soulanges, Laval, the Island of Montreal and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu were much more marked, reaching between 23% and 34%.
The homes most affected by the drop in sales were plexes, i.e. buildings with two to five units, with a 36% drop in the number of transactions. Sales of condominiums fell by 22% and those of single-family homes by 14%.
The APCIQ also found that the median price of single-family homes increased by 5% year over year, to reach $525,000, while that of condominiums increased slightly by 3% to reach $385,000 in during the same period.
However, median prices for single-family homes and condominiums were lower in August than in July.