Ottawa Real Estate Market - May Stats

Another monthly market update where first we take a look at the numbers of this year versus last year

at the same time. So May of 2023 versus May 2022.

So the average price of a home in May 2023 was $635,000 here in the city of Ottawa, that's down 6% from the same time last year. The sold-to-list price ratio was 99.25%, which is down 6.5% from the same time last year. The unit sold was 2,368. That's actually up 3% from May 2022, and the days on market were 26.3 days, which is up 105% over May 2022.

Next, let's take a look at the inventory. This is the number that we’ve been following closely over the last couple of months because we've seen so few listings. So here's how the inventory compares to the same time last year.

So the total inventory is actually up 35% from May of last year, at 2,892 units for sale at the end of May. The months of inventory are at 1.3 months, meaning at this rate, if we didn't see any more homes sell, we'd be out of inventory in 1.3 months. And the new listings were actually down 9%, we saw 2,822 new listings. The new listings has been significantly down

month over month since the beginning of the year.

The average home price over the last 6 years, starting with January of 2018, so the average price of a home in January

of 2018 was $358,000; that's a 77.3% return for anyone who bought a home then. What you'll also notice by looking at this graph is that we do have quite a few market swings where the prices come up, come down a little bit, and then come back up. My prediction for the next couple of months is that we’ve hit the peak of this year and we're going to start to see prices come down.

Next, let's take a look at the average days on market, which we've seen increase significantly over the last 12 months but decrease significantly month over month.

When taking a look at the number of units sold, you can see that in the beginning of the year and the first few months, we were selling significantly less homes than we have seen in other years. In April, we passed the 2020 numbers because that was the middle of the pandemic, but mainly, they've actually passed the 2022 numbers. Now that is where the market started to drop off last year; a lot less homes started selling because of the interest rate increases. So while we are still selling significantly less homes than we were in 2019 and 2021, we have seen home sales pick up significantly.

You can see that we were selling significantly less homes week by week since the beginning of the year; only the last couple weeks did we surpass the 2022 numbers, where the sales really started to drop off because of the interest rate hikes. All this is aside from 2020, because that was a middle pandemic when we saw sales really start to drop off. But the reason that I'm saying I'm expecting to see the market soften over the next couple months is because new listings are increasing but sales is starting to steadily drop, just like they do every year around this time.

All right, guys, I'm going to end this one with a disclaimer. That's because we take a look at the overall market trends the amount of new listings by week the amount of solds and the average home price across the whole city, but because we've seen so few listings come to Market this year, there are major segments in the city, pockets in different neighborhoods and

different types of homes, and there aren't any homes available right now.

So any of those homes that come on the market are still going to get massive demand and probably a sale price way above and beyond anything that we've seen recently. However, as more and more homes come on the market and more sellers see the prices going up and see that this is their opportunity to get top dollar, we see inventory increase. We see supply increasing and buyer choices increasing. So buyers right now won't be fighting over the same townhomes or the same single homes where there's a lot going on.

So if you're reading this and you're wondering how this affects your specific property and you want to send me a message about the area you live in and the type of home that you have, I'll help answer your question of how much your home is worth today and if I see the market going up or down in your specific area.