The last year has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for everybody. And the Ottawa real estate market isn't any different. So the July numbers are in, I think it’s the perfect time to do an Ottawa real estate market update.

So firstly, we'll do a little snapshot. And we'll look at the numbers of July of last year versus July of this year. And then we'll go into more of what's been happening on a monthly basis where the trends have been where the trends are going.

So when comparing July 2020, versus July 2021, we're going to see the average price of the home go up 18%, from $484,222 to $572,349. But we're going to see the number of units sold decrease 22%, from 2,800 to 2,168. And we saw the average days on the market decrease from 26 to 17. So when we look at the decrease the unit sold is 22%. It can be a bit misleading. So I want to take a look at the actual graphic that shows units sold year over year.

So the reason I'm mentioning that is that a lot of people talk about the market crashing and you might see a decrease in 20%, thinking, oh no, the market is dropping when in fact is doing exactly what it does every single summer.

Next, let's take a look at the average price of the home. And although we saw an 18% increase over July last year,

if you take a look at the prices month over month, you'll see that we saw a decline from $618,254 to $572,349 last month. When looking at this graphic, we see that prices peaked in March, and then fairly stayed steady until they did a major drop in July. But this isn't really the full story. As you can see from the next graph, when we look at the average price of townhomes, you'll see they've been on a steady decline since March.

So why is it that we see that the average price of a townhome has been steadily declining since March, for the average price of a home overall has stayed steady and looks like a massive drop in July? That's because, the stats cover the whole Ottawa board which includes all the areas outside of Ottawa, we've seen that a lot of these rural places have seen the shift a little bit slower and then catching up. But again, no need to panic. Although it looks like we're seeing a massive drop. If we take a look at home prices year over year, just like units sold, you'll see that the peak in March and then a steady decline for the rest of the year.

Because home prices spiked up so fast this year, we're seeing them spike down a little bit faster than usual. But now we're seeing it start to equalize a little bit more and have more of a balanced market.

I think this is something really important that we should be talking about. Because we see in the media a lot of people talking about the home prices dropping about a potential crash. But the fact is the home prices have been declining for months now, which is what they always do.

If you take a look at the next slide, you'll see the average home prices month over month for the past 15 years.

The prices are always jumping up followed by a sharp decline. But you can see that gradually they're always going up. As you can see every time the prices peak there followed by a quick downfall. If we just take a look at last year, we saw the prices peaked in September and then declined to the rest of the year. And in January, February, March of this year, the prices went up 20%. Now they've been declining since. Now we have to remember that home prices rely on completely supply and demand. So we had a lot of buyers get out the price of homes this winter. But now the prices are dropping again, those buyers are now hearing about it and they're able to jump into the market.

What happens when they jump on the market? Prices go up. So for all people looking for the market to crash, you know what maybe the prices will get cheaper, but you also might be missing your opportunity to get a great deal on a house. I understand the real estate market can be very frustrating. So if you ever have any questions, please don't hesitate to give me a call.