Ottawa condo demand slows

Sales fell 15.5%, in November: real estate board

Shrinking demand for condominiums in November sapped any momentum in Ottawa’s resale homes market.

Condo sales fell 15.5 per cent from the same month a year earlier, pulling down the overall real estate market by 0.7 per cent even as sales of other housing types held steady.

The drop came after three months of small gains in overall sales figures.

For the first 11 months of 2013, condo sales have fallen 6.6 per cent, according to figures released Wednesday by the Ottawa Real Estate Board. Values have also declined, but only marginally. The average condo resale price so far in 2013 is $263,902, a 1.7 per cent drop from 2012.

For other housing types, sales are down by 2.3 per cent for 2013, but the average price has risen by 2.1 per cent to $382,597, according to the report.

Chris Scott, a Keller Williams VIP Realty sales representative, said he hasn’t seen any major price softening in the apartment-style condos in which he specializes.

Still, with new condo developments stalled and as many as 1,000 existing condos listed for sale — “almost a year’s worth of inventory” — he says pressure on sellers to reduce prices will only increase.

Without the foreign investors who are buoying the markets in Vancouver and Toronto, Scott predicts Ottawa’s condo market will stay sluggish into 2014. But he believes demand will catch up and prices will firm as more people opt for the condo lifestyle.

“The fundamentals of the local economy are very strong,” he said.

Tim Lee, president of the Ottawa Real Estate Board, said the stability long observed in the capital’s real estate market should give confidence to owners of condos and other housing types.

“We don’t have these wild fluctuations,” he said.

“It’s not like, ‘ Well we bought, we got transferred and now we have to sell and the market’s tanked.’ That happens in Toronto and Vancouver a lot because they can go up and down in a very short period, and in Ottawa it just doesn’t happen.”