Home sales dip in Montreal area

Vaudreuil-soulanges bucks the trend, posting 16 per cent surge in first quarter

Home sales in the Montreal metropolitan area dipped three per cent during the first quarter of 2014, compared to the same period in 2013, the Greater Montreal Real Estate Board said Monday.

The exception was the offisland region of Vaudreuil-Soulanges, where first-quarter home sales surged 16 per cent year over year.

In all, 9,623 home sales were made in the Montreal metropolitan area, the board said.

Its report, citing the real estate brokers’ Centris provincial database, said this was the second consecutive quarterly decline in sales and the sixth decrease in the past seven quarters.

The quarterly sales slowdown was mainly due to an eight per cent drop in condominium sales, the report said. Single-family home sales remained stable, while multiplex sales (of two to five dwellings in a building) gained one per cent.

The number of deals on the island of Montreal didn’t change by much, but Laval and the South Shore dropped by eight per cent and nine per cent respectively.

Diane Ménard, vicepresident, GMREB board of directors and spokeswoman for the Quebec Federation of Real Estate Boards (Montreal area), said the number of properties for sale in the Montreal area has been steadily increasing over the past 14 quarters. But the nine per cent rise shown in the first quarter indicates the pace at which active listings are increasing is slowing, especially for condominiums.

The median price for single-family homes and plexes rose one per cent over the past year in the Montreal area, to $275,000 and $425,000 respectively.