Big jump in local home resales

Home resales were up about 20 per cent in the West Island area in the first half of 2007 compared to the same months in the previous year, according to statistics provided by the Greater Montreal Real Estate Board (GMREB) last week.

“It’s been a very good, balanced, market,” said Nicki Lynn Ayoub, a real estate agent with Royal LePage Village Pointe Claire.

In the West Island, from Dorval to Senneville, 1,725 homes exchanged hands between January and June, representing an increase of 21 per cent from last year.

In seven off-island towns, from Ile Perrot to St. Lazare, 984 homes were sold in the first six months of the year, up 19.9 per cent from 2006.

“We’re moving a lot of homes but prices are not increasing,” said Linda Boisclair of ReMax Cadibec in Kirkland. “If the asking price for a home is more or less reasonable, those will sell really fast.”

Ayoub thinks a reason home resales went up in the West Island was that people, particularly anglophones, were waiting for the provincial election results (with Jean Charest’s Liberals re-elected as a minority government in March and André Boisclair’s Parti Québécois coming in third behind Mario Dumont’s Action démocratique du Québec).

“People say they are not worried about it (a referendum) but I think it’s in the back of their minds,” Ayoub said. “It makes people think twice (about buying a home). It had an impact.”

She said that with a potential increase in interest rates later this year, people have decided to make their home purchase beforehand. As well, more favourable mortgage-insurance rates and reduced down payment rules from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. have made it tempting for first-time buyers to enter the market, she added.

Boisclair also thinks the threat of interest rate hikes are driving would-be buyers to enter the market now, which she sees as stabilized from about three years ago when homes were “selling at crazy prices.”

Across the Greater Montreal area, the GMREB reported a 13 per cent in increase in sales, with 32,957 transactions, in the first half of 2007 compared to last year.

Home resales (January-June 2007)

Baie d’Urfé: 33 (up 65 per cent from 2006)

Beaconsfield: 174 (up 18.4 per cent)

Dollard des Ormeaux: 356 (up 13.4 per cent)

Dorval: 131 (up 18 per cent)

Hudson: 64 (up 77.8 per cent)

Ile Bizard/Ste. Geneviève: 143 (up 4.4 per cent)

Ile Perrot: 104 (up 1.9 per cent)

Kirkland: 162 (up 20.9 per cent)

Notre Dame de l’Ile Perrot: 108 (down 10 per cent)

Pierrefonds/Roxboro: 580 (up 38.1 per cent)

Pincourt: 113 (up 6.6 per cent)

Pointe Claire: 235 (up 11.9 per cent)

Ste. Anne de Bellevue: 38 (up 11.8 per cent)

St. Lazare: 221 (up 36.4 per cent)

Senneville: 5 (up 66.7 per cent)

Terrasse-Vaudreuil: 9 (down 18 per cent)

Vaudreuil-Dorion: 365 (up 28.5 per cent)