Hampstead selling prices up an average of $50,000 in 2012

Dear Montrealers, the holiday season is upon us, the market typically slows down to a crawl during the month of December. As I mentioned in my previous column, now is a great time to get everything in order to hit the ground running in 2013. I personally have clients who have contacted me in order to sell their properties, my recommendations do not change from one person to the other, I would prefer to do a proper analysis of a property and it’s market, choose a nice sunny day for pictures and have any small flaws corrected in a property to bring it to market at the beginning of the Spring Market rather than hurry up and bring it to market in 2012. This way you benefit from the impact of a “New Listing” in a peak season, and in this case a New Market as well.

I would like to thank all of my readers for their feedback, most of it has been positive and I hope to get more and more in the upcoming months. Last month I received a phone call from Julie from NDG, her question was “why should I use the services of a broker when I could promote my home on my own?” This question is a very popular question we deal with every day, my answer to her was that as a Certified Real Estate Broker with the OACIQ, I have the knowledge and experience to:

  • Properly evaluate the value of a home using facts, comparables, market analysis, history and trends.
  • I know how to market a property to protect my clients from the many traps in Real Estate (Hidden Defects, Servitudes, Overpricing, Legal Issues, etc. …)
  • This is my career, I am available 24 hours a day / 7 days a week to answer phone calls, open doors, market properties and setup meetings.
  • Every day I am aware of new properties on the market or coming to market that may impact you.

Today’s market is going as I have predicted, we have a steady number of sales if we compare to 2011, and the value of homes sold up to date is also rising compared to previous years. The big difference is that we have many more properties on the market at the moment, some communities have over 30% more homes being sold at this time of year compared to previous years. It will be very interesting to see what the market looks like come the New Year because many contracts will be expiring in December.

Let’s use some fictitious numbers to better understand this situation. If Market A had 100 properties and we sold 70, that means that we sold 70% of them. Now if Market B had 130 properties and we sold 70, that means we sold 53% of them. Weather you are Buying or Selling a property, you would have a preference in these two markets.

We are also noticing a hike in number of properties being offered as rentals (single family homes and condos) in the Greater Montreal Area. Now this is not intended to scare or discourage anyone, the real estate market continues to go well and we will continue to see fluctuation in values of homes, they may very well increase at a slower rate. The reason I bring this up is because this is the market we must deal with in the upcoming months or years. All the more reason to get the job done properly the first time around, with the experience and knowledge of a real estate broker.

This month I will be targeting two very nice communities in depth, Hampstead and the Town of Mount Royal. Let’s see how the market has been this year for them.

Hampstead

In Hampstead we are noticing a small decrease in number of properties sold this year compared to last year. (36 in 2012 vs 39 in 2011). We have registered a nice increase in average sale price, 4.3% higher than last year, with the average selling price reaching almost $50,000 more than last year. 2013 should be interesting when taking into consideration all the improvements that have been done over the past years to streets, sidewalks, parks, etc …

Town of Mount Royal

Up and Up, very happy to point out that in the Town of Mount Royal we have more sales registered to date than in 2011 as well as higher average sales for the year. Value is up by 1% since 2011 and the number of sales this year has increased by 10 properties representing 8.4%. Even with our recent turbulence in the market, TMR will surely end the year with pride.

Thank you all for taking the time to read my column this month, keep me in mind when discussing real estate during the holiday’s suppers.

Happy Holidays!

Cheers
Philip Clement

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