Residential

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.

Claridge Homes chief financial officer Neil Malhotra said higher mortgage rates, rising construction costs due to inflation and a new bylaw that hikes the fees developers pay to the city in lieu of parkland at highrise building sites have combined to make large-scale development projects a risky proposition.

National home sales jumped by 11.3 per cent between March and April as the real estate market picked up again, but supply remained at a 20 year-low, the Canadian Real Estate Association said Monday.

The national housing agency says the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts for the fourth month of the year was 16,673 units, up six per cent from 15,715 in March.