New home sales in Ottawa surge in May, but market still trails 2024’s pace: GOHBA

David Sali

June 20, 2025

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New home sales in Ottawa rose dramatically last month compared with April, but the number of transactions in the first five months of 2025 still lagged behind last year’s pace, the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association says. A total of 315 new housing units were sold in Ottawa in May, a 28.6 per cent jump from April but an 11.3 per cent decline from the same month a year ago, according to the latest housing market report from the GOHBA and PMA Brethour Realty Group. Overall, 1,418 new homes were purchased across the city from January to the end of May, a 6.4 per cent drop from the 1,151 sales recorded in the same period last year. “May saw the highest monthly sales this year, and the sharp increase from April is an encouraging sign,” GOHBA executive director Jason Burggraaf said in a news release Friday. “Buyers are clearly still active, but higher borrowing costs and ongoing economic uncertainty continue to temper the overall pace of the market.” A closer look at May’s sales figures shows the city’s south and west ends continue to be hot spots for homebuyers, each accounting for 37 per cent of all transactions last month. The east end captured 21 per cent of sales, while central Ottawa accounted for four per cent. Meanwhile, townhomes remain the most popular housing type, representing 44 per cent of May’s sales. Single-family homes followed closely at 40 per cent, a notable increase from 34 per cent a year ago. Condo townhomes accounted for 13 per cent of all sales, while condo apartments made up three per cent. The slight gain in sales momentum comes as the overall market for new homes remains sluggish. Last month, Burggraaf told OBJ an industry that was already struggling with rising interest rates and surging development fees now faces consumers who are hesitant to pull the trigger on new purchases as they anxiously monitor the ongoing trade war and wait to see if governments make good on various policies aimed at easing the housing crisis. Burggraaf said homebuilders “desperately need certainty” on whether the federal and provincial governments plan to go ahead with measures aimed at cutting the price of new homes such as scrapping the GST on new units sold to first-time buyers. He added that the ongoing uncertainty is stymying the bounceback builders were hoping for once the Bank of Canada began cutting interest rates last year. “Unfortunately, that hurts the industry overall because we’re not building on spec,” Burggraaf said. “Everything’s kind of made to order, and it’s dragging out the possibility of a recovery. We’ve been in this kind of bottom-of-the-market cycle since 2023. The light at the end of the tunnel has dimmed. We thought it was getting brighter, and now it feels like it’s pulling farther away again.”