Montreal home sales down nine per cent since last May: Quebec association

MONTREAL – The Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers says a slowdown continued to take shape in Montreal last month as home sales dropped by nine per cent since last year.

The association says sales for the month totalled 4,874, a drop from 5,354 in May 2021.

The sales slowdown was most evident in the plexes category, which covers multi-family homes like duplexes and triplexes and saw a 15 per cent decrease since last year.

Single-family homes saw their sales fall by 7 per cent, whilecondominiums dropped by 10 per cent.

The association says median prices fell from $580,000 in April for single-family homes to $576,000 in May, the first decrease in two consecutive months since June 2021. However, that price is still 16 per cent higher than in May 2021.

New listings for May climbed 12 per cent to 7,152 last month from 6,360 a year ago, but the number of active listings was virtually unchanged from May 2021.

“Not since 2014 have so many new properties been put up for sale in the Montreal CMA market for this period of the year,” said Charles Brant, director of the board’s market analyst department, in a release.

“This is the first time since 2015 that the Montreal CMA market has recorded an increase (0.3 per cent) in its inventory of properties on the market for this period of the year. It is also the first month for all periods combined since September 2015.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 3, 2022.