There’s a ton of data available about Ottawa’s housing market but you have to look all over the place to find it.
Last month, I was invited to talk at a community meeting in Kanata about the housing landscape in our city, and I thought it would be useful to pull some of the data points together into a hand-out. That document was well-received so I’ve refined it into this new summary, showing a snapshot of information gleaned from sources including CMHC, the Ottawa Real Estate Board, the City of Ottawa, Rentals.ca, and more.
I'll try to update this every month and I’ll keep the latest version on my web site: glengower.ca/housing/. Please get in touch with any questions about data or sources. And let me know what you think about these numbers. Do any of them surprise you?
A few observations about the numbers:
The price of a new home has come down somewhat in recent months. Earlier this year the average cost of a new home had inched over $1-million.
Rentals.ca says the 1-bedroom average rent is up 1.1% year-over-year, 2-bedroom average rent is up 2.8% year-over-year.
Building permit and housing completion data is from the City's Q1 2024 Residential Dwelling Approval Pipeline. These numbers are down compared to the previous quarter. (Worth noting that there are 15,902 dwellings currently under construction, including 690 not-for-profit dwellings.)
The number of people on the affordable housing wait list continues to climb. The last time I checked a year ago the number was closer to 12,500.