One of my VIP clients asked me the other day, in response to the data in one of my monthly newsletters, “…how do you see the condo market evolving over the next 12 to 19 months?”

The data that I use for my monthly newsletter is provided by the Ottawa Real Estate Board.  They run some statistical reports and pull the results from the MLS database and dump them into excel files for our use.  There is some really good data, but there are limits to the granularity the provide in these canned reports.

Any reports that you see in the papers or on other agents’ websites or blogs that refer to condo sales and prices in Ottawa, unless they specifically state they have pulled raw data from MLS to analyse a specfic market segment, refer to all properties classed as condominiums.  This includes apartments, townhomes and terrace homes.

I’ve decided to start slicing and dicing the Ottawa condo market to see what’s going on with apartment condos.  I’m crafting various ways to look at the market and with the first findings I’ve already seen that there are so many possible ways to interpret the data.  In coming weeks I’ll intersperse articles that delve into these findings and discuss various assumptions and theories amongst posts on other topics.

Core vs. Citywide Apartment Condo Sales 2005 – 2013

For starters, take a look at the above graph showing the number of apartment condos sold in Ottawa each year from 2005 through 2012 in the core of the city within the city as a whole.  The numbers for the whole city include those sold in core areas.  Below is a map showing you the area I’ve delineated as “core” – this is based entirely subjectively on my experience working with people looking to buy condo apartments over the past 8 years, and what I’ve found buyers to mean by “close to downtown.”

Next time, I’ll show you how the sale prices of these two sets of condos have trended over the same period.  Any guesses?

Condos for Sale in Ottawa by Bruce Brown, real estate broker with Keller Williams Ottawa Realty, brokerage