Residential

The Canadian Real Estate Association has downgraded its home sales forecast for this year and next as fewer buyers jump into the market.

The average home price in Ottawa fell in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, Royal LePage says.

CLV Group plans to gut the recently vacated Narono Building at 360 Laurier Ave. W. and turn it into a residential development with 139 rental units, president Oz Drewniak told OBJ on Wednesday. 

Katasa Group, which recently filed plans to replace a Centretown medical building with an apartment complex, wants to construct two highrises on St. Laurent Boulevard that would contain a total of more than 400 residential units.

Home sales in the capital rose year-over-year in June, but prices held steady as the city’s resale housing supply keeps “trending in the right direction,” the Ottawa Real Estate Board said Wednesday.

The CMHC is worried housing affordability will deteriorate unless the country acts on supply challenges and other housing measures soon.

The annual pace of housing starts in Ottawa-Gatineau plummeted 71 per cent in May as new builds of condos, apartments and other types of multi-unit housing projects fell sharply, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported Thursday.

The Canadian Real Estate Association says home sales in May rose compared with the same month last year to post the first year-over-year sales increase since June 2021 as prices also climbed higher.

Minto Apartment REIT will not exercise its option to purchase a major rental development in the Glebe from sister company Minto Properties because rising interest rates have made the cost of financing the deal too expensive, the Ottawa-based REIT said this week.

Home sales in the capital rose six per cent last month from May 2022, the Ottawa Real Estate Board reported this week – and realtors say the bidding wars that raged during the market’s peak in late 2021 and early 2022 are back as a lack of supply continues to limit buyers’ options.