Bruce Brown

Here's an update on the Real Estate Market in the Ottawa west end neighbourhood of Bel Air. For our purposes, we include areas 5401, 5403, 5405, and 5406 which are Bel Air Park, Bel Air Heights, and the two Copeland Park neighbourhoods. 5402 (Braemer Park) and 5404 (Industrial) are excluded as they are less uniform in neighbourhood characteristics and as a result do not tend to have similar market values to the other area 54 neighbourhoods.

You may have read that YTD market data to the end of October shows Ottawa still in the heat of a strong Seller's market. Low inventory, sales to new listing ratios over .6, increasing prices and volume all continue. It is always much more interesting to look at specific neighbourhoods (or even Streets!) and compare to the city-wide results. End of October prices were up over 13% year over year, and volume was up more than 25% year over year. So Bel Air is doing well, but actually a little slower than the overall Ottawa average on price and volume. Days on market is very low, however, especially for Residential properties (non Condominium.)

Data is provided by the Ottawa Real Estate Board to its REALTOR members through the MLS system and statistical reports. Facts are believed to be accurate but are not warranted.

Folks, you might think the most difficult thing about Blogging regularly is coming up with topics, or being an interesting enough person to relay said topics in a way that compells others to read and thereby motivates you to keep writing. But no! The most difficult thing? Fighting with the rudimentary tools provided by the Blogging hosts.

On my Point2 blog the most difficult aspect is adding an image to a post. That's right - with facebook and myspace and flickr and even the most basic email systems able to understand that <ctrl>V means paste the image here.... or at least having an upload button to load an image from your hard drive all being dead simple - the Point2 blog user interface took me about 8 hours of solid work to add one image to my latest post.

And here on active rain, it's pretty much impossible to tell how that image is going to look in your outside blog which is just mysteriously populated when you check it off during blog post creation. I don't mind that so much - at least it is easy, and I can see the results immediately afterward and learn from experience not to make the images large enough for anyone to actually see.

What is most annoying so far about Active Rain blogging is that, with all of the wonderful control over where your post appears - it seems impossible to avoid posting every little piece into your main blog. I don't want my hyper local posts appearing in my main "Agent Bruce's Random Thoughts" blog - I only want them appearing on Localism and my outside blog. But it just doesn't seem possible to arrange this. It's incredibly annoying!

So bear with me... I haven't begun my "interesting" ha ha ha series of posts yet because I'm still struggling with organizing content into the separate streams. Once I figure out some way to trick it (after investing hundreds of hours undoubtedly) I'll begin to actually write some random thoughts. In the meantime, enjoy reading market data for every little neighbourhood, in every freaking blogosphere to which I contribute.

Cheers,
Bruce

This is an update on Real Estate market activity in the Alta Vista area year to date as of November 12, 2009. We include MLS areas that we consider to be relatively equivalent or uniform from the standpoint of actually living in the community. There is always room for variation within a community but we work to draw boundaries that make more sense than the second level MLS area boundaries which, for example, may include an industrial park along with a residential neighbourhood. For our "Alta Vista" definition we have excluded the areas closest to the General Hospital and also those that border busier parts of Walkley Road. Those sub-areas will be tracked separately as property prices and the profile of typical buyers are quite different than in the heart of Alta Vista. The most accurate representation may delve right down to individual streets but this is too time consuming for a general neighbourhood market update. For our clients, Comparative Market Analyses that we prepare for buying or selling homes do carefully analyse property locations and features in detail.

As you have probably read in the media, Ottawa is enjoying a Seller's market this year, as measured by several metrics used to gauge the bias of a Real Estate Market. Individual neighbourhoods often vary from the city-wide trend, of course. The data here shows that Alta Vista closely follows the City trend: The Sales to Listings Ratio of .69 is indicative of a market biased toward Sellers. Most commonly, a balanced market is said to yield a sales to listings ratio between .4 and .6 with values below this range indicating a Buyer's Market and higher values indicating a Seller's Market.

The average days on market in Alta Vista of 26 is considerably more aggressive than the Ottawa average which has been hovering closer to 45 days this year. The average price increase over 2008 of .7% is less than the city-wide average increase of about 3%

Check back often for periodic updates on other great Ottawa Neighbourhoods.

[ Data is provided by the Ottawa Real Estate Board to its REALTOR members and is believe to be accurate but is not warranted. Data in this post reflects Residential (excluding condominium) property class transactions recorded in the Ottawa Real Estate Board's MLS system. ]

Except my plan is that you will get more... in fact, I can promise. Funny how it takes a while to establish new disciplines - even the simplest thing like blogging. I remember in Grade 10 our English teacher made us write a log - seems like every day but it was probably only once a week. And then back when I had a boss I had to write a weekly report. Made him feel better if I typed up something about what I was doing, even though seeing the results of my work seemed to me the better gauge.

I ramble. On my blog, as on my site, as in my marketing and with me in person, what you see is what you get. And today's example of that is photography. Please note that all photography on my site and on my blog is created by me, or occasionally now by my son Mitchell. That includes my sweet new banner on this blog. Took that shot early one morning in July 2006 (5:06:13 a.m. to be exact) so I would be really ticked if people stole it and used it for any purpose other than perhaps adorning their personal computer screen. I mean I got up really early to be all set up on that bridge at that hour... so I EARNED that copyright.

Here's the full shot:

Eat your heart out - our city is GORGEOUS.

Ok, I have some serious trains of thought to put on the rails soon, so watch this space.

Ciao for now,
Bruce

You've heard the proverb, or perhaps it was just a ditty: "If you can't move Mohammed to the Mountain, move the Mountain to Mohammed" - hey, I'm paraphrasing. This wasn't a big one in my quip-driven psyche growing up. Well, this is really not a profound discourse related to this little ditty - but rather a light note to show you that even a perfect Agent like myself (sorry, I'm rolling on the floor laughing now...) is not perfect. Some of you in the Ottawa area who are following condo listings really closely may have noticed my imperfection yesterday: I listed two new rental units at the Mondrian and when I was entering the data into the MLS Database (hope I used "the MLS Database" in accordance with proper trademark rules - use is so diluted it really is hard to remember the guidelines for proper use) I came to the "Directions" field. Now, in my defense, these two units are on the yet-to-be-completed 18th and 19th floors of the building. As I can't access the units yet, I had not actually gone to see the units. I've driven by the building for months while it has been under construction - I get delayed as I drive West-bound because the construction at times has spilled into the right hand lane leaving only a farmer's path through that block of downtown to drive by. Picturing the building in my mind, it is on the right as I drive West, and therefore it is on the NorthWest corner of Laurier and Bank.

EXCEPT of course, as I found out yesterday when I went to shoot photos of the outside of the building, I was driving West-bound all of these times NOT ON LAURIER but one block South! D'uh. On the one-way (Gloucester) of course. And it turns out the construction, which I always realised was spilling out from a recess in the block, as the new condo itself is actually on Bank, not Gloucester, (ha, in my mind...) is not the Mondrian at all! They are building another building - some kind of boring looking 1950's throwback office building, on Gloucester. The Mondrian, of course, is on Laurier, and also sides on Bank. It is on the SOUTHWEST corner. Alas, in MLS I MOVED THE MOUNTAIN. But no worries, I put it back. So no, there is not some NEW NEW Mondrian Phase on the Northwest corner. We're still working on completing and occupying the original Mondrian on the SouthWest corner!

A lot of funny things happen in this business - not always my fault. But proudly entering listings and then the next day realizing we've made silly errors is one of those things that causes a temporary gasp of panic. In this case no big deal other than potential loss of credibility! Does Bruce even know where his listing is???