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Ottawa Housing Market - Mid-Year Status Check for 2010

If you thought the housing boom was over, think again! While building starts in other major cities in Canada and across the country fell, Ottawa's stable economy and employment rate resulted in record high numbers of starts and sales in July, which achieved the highest level so far, not only in 2010 but also trending upwards over the previous four years.

That was despite single family homes starts declining by 15% in Ontario as a whole. (In Ottawa they shrank by only 1.8%). Semi-detached home starts rose by 4.8%, row housing by 24.6%, and condo apartments by a whopping 167.6% - the highest amount in 15 years. All that is largely because job growth in Ottawa reached record levels in previous months.

Total housing starts in Ottawa's Metropolitan Area increased by over 40 per cent higher than at the same time last year. Most activity came from apartments. And town houses reached the highest year-to-date totals in 15 years.

First-time home buyers were in evidence again.

The majority of increases in Nepean, Kanata and Goulbourn were town houses, whereas those in Osgoode and Rideau Township were single detached houses. Rideau Township doubled its starts activity.

Greatest growth naturally came in areas of available building land, like Barrhaven, Kanata, and Nepean - whereas Gloucester showed the same level of starts as in the previous year. Cumberland showed a comparatively even split between, singles and towns.

The Ottawa housing market is still a sellers' market, due largely to high demand from first-time home buyers including Ottawa's new immigrant populations. The result is that prices continue to rise.

As for resales through MLS, while they decreased nationally by 27.2% at the same time, sales of existing homes in Ottawa climbed to record levels. Prices showed an increase of 7.1% over the previous 12 months (15.2% for Condos). The average sale price for condos was $249,674. For Freehold residential homes it was $321,827.

As is so often the case, Ottawa housing bucked the national trend which is slightly down, as the following CMHC chart shows:

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