How affordable is it to buy a home in Ottawa?

People looking to buy their own home in Ottawa say the housing market in the Canadian capital is still hot, even though the city's real estate board is seeing signs of a temporary cooling. Earlier this week The Ottawa Real Estate Board released a report saying the June secondary housing market was similar to the typical June period before the pandemic.

Board President Debra Wright assures that the market situation is fairly balanced: "Prices remain about the same. — commented Wright. — We're not seeing a strong decline so far, but we're also not seeing the volatility that we saw before.

While it's hot.

The Real Estate Board report said the average condominium price in June was $435,198 CAD, up 21% from 2020. The average sales price of a residential property was $725,970 CAD, up 26% from a year ago.

However, the board said home prices have stopped rising as they did at the beginning of the year, which Debra Wright said is a sign that prices are stabilizing.

Ben Rabidoux of Edge Realty Analytics says he agrees that the market will normalize, but with an artificial and unsustainable peak in the first quarter of 2021:

"It feels like you've reduced the speed limit from 150 kilometres an hour to... 100 kilometres an hour. It is still a very hot market. There are still few people who can afford to buy homes," Rabidu said, and added that he doesn't see a fix for this situation in the future. — We are still living in this strange world with incredibly low interest rates and pandemic recovery, and we really don't know when things will change."

Buyers remain disappointed

In this market situation, it's still difficult for buyers to navigate. Dan Riendo has been looking to buy a home in Ottawa for two years, during which time he has looked at about 60 homes. Riendo and his wife say they liked fewer than 10, and the prices of the homes they looked at sometimes exceeded $140,000 CAD.

"To say that the market has relaxed a little bit... I'm not sure. There are fewer houses on the market and all the prices being asked are still higher than they should be," commented Riendo.

Riendo says he and his wife earn above-average salaries, but were shocked and disappointed to discover that two-family houses in the city cost $1.2 million CAD. Because of these increases in real estate prices, many people are now buying houses hastily and not at all the ones they like.

It's worth the wait.

Josh Flynn and his wife Marcella also began their search for a new home two years ago, and that experience was very different from when they bought their first home in 2013. Flynn says that in those years, there was more time to choose a home without rushing And now you have to have time to grab that home that's cheaper because of the high competition.