Hey Ottawa Kevin here with the Feely Group eXp. Time for my favorite video of the month, the monthly market update, the March stats are in.

So like always, we're gonna go through how March of this year compares to March of last year.

And then we're gonna dive into what it's looking like month by month and follow the trends.

So the average price of a home in March 2023 was $604,000.

That's down about 14% from the same time last year. The sold-to-list price ratio is 98%. That's down 13% from the same time last year. The units sold: we saw 1,458 homes sell in the month of March this year.

That's down 38% from the same time last year, and the days on market are up 188%. Today, we're sitting at 36.15 days on the market.

Next, we're gonna go through how many new listings we saw last month, the total inventory, and the months of inventory that we have currently on the market.

So in total inventory, we had 2,678 homes on the market at the end of March of this year, that's up about 113% from March 2022. The months of inventory is about 2.5 months. That's up 316% from March 2022. And the new listings were actually down by 21%.

So we saw 2,089 new listings hit the market in the month of March. So we have to keep in mind that last March was an all time low for inventory. We're at about 0.7 months of inventory, and that's why the increase seems like so much. But at 2.5 months of inventory, we're actually pretty low, and you can see that the amount of new listings hitting the market is actually less. So we are starting to see inventory shortages.

We're starting to see bidding wars again, and the prices are coming up.

So next, we'll take a look at the average price of home month by month.

So like we said, the average price of a home is actually down 14% from the same time last year, when in March of 2022 the average home was selling for about $716,533. And today it's selling for about $604,692.

However, if you take a look at the last couple of months, you'll see that the market bottomed out at $560,000 in December and it has come up every month since.

Next, we're gonna take a look at the sold to as ratio. So taking a look at the average sold to a ratio, we can see a very similar trend to the average price. The average price came down about 14%, and the sold-to-price ratio came out just under 14%. The average home sold for just under 112% of the asking price in March 2022 and just over 98% of the asking price in March 2023. And while these 2% changes seem very similar, the way real estate is sold has changed significantly at the same time.

Last year, a lot of people were underpricing their homes purposefully just to get into a bidding war.

Whereas now they are pricing their homes more appropriately, and bidding wars are starting to happen because of the low inventory. But obviously, this is only for homes that are priced correctly. Homes that are priced comparable to last year are sitting on the market and selling for significantly less than asking.

And so next, we're gonna take a look at the average days on market.

How long is it taking homes to sell in the city of Ottawa right now? So the average home in Ottawa is taking about 36 days to sell, compared to 12 days around the same time last year. And while the diesel market has almost tripled, 36 days is a more normalized market. You can see that it's even come down from the peak of 47 in January, which is actually a positive thing for both buyers and sellers. It makes the process a lot less stressful than it was at the time. Last year, buyers were able to see multiple homes and make sure they were making the right choice. And sellers are also able to have enough people through to make sure that they aren't just taking the first offer on the table and that they're getting what their home is worth.

And next, we're gonna take a look at the units sold.

So as you can see here, the unit sold in March 2022 compared to March 2023 is a huge difference.

In March 2022, we saw 2,379 homes sell. Well, we only saw 1,458 sales this March. This is the biggest difference that we're seeing in the market right now: the amount of homes actually selling.

But if you remember, we actually had less homes hitting the market as well and that's why the market is starting to heat up.

Now, let's take a look at the units sold over the last five years. So when we take a look at the last five years, it's going to paint a little bit of a different picture. You can see that the 2023 numbers are actually significantly below the 2022 and 2021 numbers.

But we have to remember that those years were outliers. We're pretty close to the 2019 and 2020 numbers.

The 2020 numbers are a bit of an outlier as well because we saw the pandemic hit midway through March, but the market was exploding pre-pandemic.

So if you guys have been following my blogs for a while, you know that the unit sold is the number that I've been paying the closest attention to in terms of what is going on in the market.

And we would like to see more homes sell. We're seeing significantly less than even in 2019, but we are now seeing significantly less homes hit the market.

So what is gonna happen in the next couple of months here? So taking a look at the new listening by week dating back to 2019, we can see that the light blue line 2023 is significantly below 2019 2021 2022.

It is only surpassing the 2020 mark where we saw the beginning of the pandemic and everything change.

So like I said over the last few months, I've been saying to watch closely the units sold number, but now we have to start looking at the new listings number. If we see new listings continue to be significantly less year over year and sales pick up, we're gonna see the market heat up if we see the sales stay the same, but the new listings pick up.

Well, we're gonna see the market cool down. 'm actually excited to see what happens. I think it could go either way at this point.

So stay tuned for next market update. It's gonna be a big one.

I hope you guys found this helpful.