Ottawa inventory jumped 2.5x any August on record. Price for it.

Months of inventory in Ottawa hit 4.5 in August, up from 3.5 in July. OREB put a number on how unusual that is in their own release, and it is bigger than I expected. Sales fell 18.6% from last August and 24.4% from July alone, while the average price barely moved, up 0.3% year over year to $688,253. Sales down, price flat, inventory jumping. That combination is what a market looks like right before pricing has to catch up to supply. Here is what the jump means for how you set a number this month.

The jump, in OREB's own words

A full point of inventory in one month sounds like a lot. OREB's release confirms it is. Their own words: "Months of inventory increased from 3.5 to 4.5. Over the previous 10 years, the median July-to-August change in months of inventory was zero, and no increase exceeded 0.4 months." This year's move is more than double the biggest jump on record.

Context matters here too. 4.5 months is not an all time high. August 2016 sat at 4.6, still the top of the ten year window OREB published, and every year since 2020 climbed steadily back toward that ceiling. What is new is not the level. It is the speed. Nine years of gradual recovery got most of the way there in twelve months, and this August alone did more than a third of that work by itself.

The townhouse call from August 9 just landed

Regular readers will remember the August 9 post, where townhouse months of inventory had crossed below single family for the first time in months, and I argued that wasn't real tightening, it was owners withdrawing rather than selling, a queue forming where the statistics couldn't see it yet.

August is that queue surfacing. Single family went from 3.2 months in July to 4.0, up 0.8. Townhouse went from 3.0 to 4.1, up 1.1, the biggest move of the three in both months and percentage terms, up 37%. Apartment went from 5.4 to 6.3, up 0.9, on top of a segment that was already the softest in the city. The segment I flagged as quietly backing up in July is the one that moved hardest in August.

If you are listing a townhouse this fall, you are selling into the segment where the ground shifted fastest, and into a pool of sellers who deferred rather than sold. Worth knowing before you set a number, not after the first three weekends pass with no offers.

What held steady, and why that will not last

Sale-to-list price ratio came in at 97.9% in August, unchanged from a year earlier and barely different from July's 97.8%. I have written before about why that number rewards priced-right sellers rather than licensing a high ask, and that argument still holds. What is new this month is the gap opening underneath it. Inventory jumped 29% in the same month the ratio did not move at all, and a ratio calculated only on completed sales cannot see the listings that walked away instead of cutting their price. OREB's release says exactly that: the drop in active listings this summer was driven more by terminations, cancellations and expirations than by completed sales, which the board reads as sellers stepping back rather than buyers stepping up. I covered that shift in more detail here.

Put it together and the picture is a lag, not a plateau. Sellers who are pricing correctly are still closing near list. A growing number of the rest are choosing to leave rather than chase the market down, which keeps 97.9% looking calm while the supply underneath it gets less calm every month.

How I would price a listing this week

Anchor to the benchmark for your specific segment, not last spring's comparable that closed in a different market, and not the townhouse comps from June before this segment's inventory turned. The composite benchmark sits at $637,700, up a modest 1.0% year over year, but that citywide figure blends a single family segment still gaining (up 2.2% year over year) against a townhouse segment still losing ground (down 4.0%). Know which one your house actually sits in before you pick a number.

Run the dollar math once so it stops feeling abstract. On the $637,700 composite benchmark, a 97.9% sale-to-list ratio works out to roughly $13,392 negotiated off list, on average, for the homes that sold. That gap held steady through a month where supply moved further than it has in a decade. If pricing has not caught up to that shift yet, this is the number I would expect to widen first, not the headline price. List at the benchmark and you are already close to where the market is actually clearing.

Withdrawing instead of pricing down does not fix this either. Every listing that quits this month becomes next month's deferred competition, the same dynamic that turned July's tight townhouse reading into August's biggest jump. If your house has been sitting, waiting it out adds you to that queue rather than removing you from it.

What would change my mind

The September release, due in early October, is the test. If sale-to-list starts to drop or months of inventory keeps climbing past 4.5, August was the start of a real repricing and not a one month blip. If the number flattens back toward 3.5, treat this post as wrong and August as noise. I will check it against the release either way and say so here.

Want a read on what your specific street and property type actually supports before you pick a list price? I'd rather run the real comps with you than have you find out the hard way. Call 613-262-6545 or email fil@613realtor.ca.