Ritziest areas get even ritzier with double-digit home price gains in July
Location, always important in real estate, is really starting to matter in Ottawa.
While benchmark prices for single-family homes across the region climbed 6.8 per cent year over year in July to $397,000, there were pockets where sellers sneered at that kind of gain.
Indeed, nearly half the 46 real estate districts saw home values jump more than 10 per cent according to data published Thursday by the Ottawa Real Estate Board.
In general, the real estate districts immediately south and west of the downtown core saw the largest increases in home values, while sellers of homes in districts to the east experienced the smallest hikes.
The sharpest jumps in the price of single-family homes occurred, as they have for several months running, in the Hunt Club-Windsor Park area just north of the international airport. The benchmark price for homes there was $456,100 in July, up 26 per cent from a year earlier.
A couple of nearby areas were also popular with homebuyers. The districts on either side of Mooney’s Bay saw the benchmark price for single-family homes surge 19.7 per cent (west side) and 17.4 per cent (east side) to $477,800 and $455,800 respectively.
Another region reporting robust
sales is a long strip running along the Ottawa River from Hintonburg ( just west of downtown) to Britannia Heights (near the new headquarters for the Department of National Defence). Nearly every district along this route recorded double-digit gains in the sale price of single-family homes in July, and some of these areas were already fairly expensive.
Consider the Carlingwood Westboro district, bordered on the west by Woodroffe Avenue and on the east by Churchill Avenue. The Ottawa River forms the northern boundary. The benchmark price for single-family homes last month jumped 11.5 per cent to $758,400 compared to July 2016, making it the third-mostexpensive district, after Rockcliffe Park ($1,568,800 in July, up 8.4 per cent) and New Edinburgh Lindenlea ($779,700, up 12.6 per cent year over year).
Indeed, the relatively robust gains for home sellers in the ritziest areas is a marked shift from earlier this year, when year-overyear price changes were slight or even negative.
The weakest part of the Ottawa market in July was in the east. The three real estate districts reporting the smallest gains in home values are Orleans-Cumberland (up 2.6 per cent year over year), Vanier (up 3.2 per cent) and Blackburn Hamlet (up 3.4 per cent). The benchmark price in each case was below $400,000.
The benchmark price is based on an index that reflects multiple housing characteristics such as roof type, number of bathrooms and the age of the property. It’s considered a better way of discerning underlying trends in the housing market than more conventional measures such as average prices.
For those who prefer the latter, prices for Ottawa homes sold through the Multiple Listing Service climbed 5.3 per cent year over year in July, reaching $420,335. The average sale price for condominiums was $267,640, up 2.8 per cent during the same period.