Westboro's train is almost here. So are 1,441 new units.

Three proposals, one neighbourhood, nobody adding them up

I read development applications the way some people read box scores, and Westboro is the most interesting page in Ottawa right now. Three live proposals sit within about a kilometre of each other. Each got its own story when it landed. Nobody has put them on the same page.

At 403 Richmond Road, the Tubman Funeral Home site near Roosevelt, Mastercraft Starwood has a concept plan for a 27-storey building branded SOHO Westboro. 272 units. Council approved a nine-storey buildout for that same site in 2021, so this is roughly three times what is actually on the books.

At 2000 to 2026 Scott Street and 214 to 318 Athlone Avenue, the former Granite Curling Club, Colonnade BridgePort has reworked two 40-storey towers into three shorter ones. 26 and 36 storeys fronting Scott with six-storey podiums, an 18-storey building behind with a four-storey podium. About 857 units, same count as the original plan.

At the north end of Winston Avenue, Uniform Urban Developments with Hobin Architecture and Fotenn have assembled five properties into a 77,000 square metre site for 14- and 13-storey towers. 312 units, roughly a third of them family-sized, 279 underground parking spaces.

Add them up. 1,441 units.

The 857 nobody gets to vote on

Here is the detail that matters most and got the least attention.

The Granite site does not require a rezoning. No rezoning means no council vote.

Sit with what that means if you live nearby. No committee meeting to show up to, no councillor to lobby, no vote to win or lose. The towers get built or they do not, and that call belongs to a developer and a lender rather than a room full of residents.

Compare that to 403 Richmond, where Coun. Jeff Leiper, who chairs the city's planning committee, has already said he will oppose an application if one comes forward. His argument is the Official Plan one: traditional mainstreets like Westboro and the Glebe are meant to grow to nine or ten storeys, while the genuinely tall buildings go into hubs near higher-order transit. The developer's counter is that the site sits close to the new LRT station.

That fight will take years. The one nobody is fighting is already permitted.

The market those units are landing in

Now the uncomfortable part.

OREB released July numbers on August 6. Citywide, the market is fine. 1,325 sales, up 0.2 per cent from last July. Average price $683,308, down 1.6 per cent. Median $635,000, dead flat. Composite benchmark $634,000, down half a per cent year over year.

Underneath that, apartments are the worst-performing thing in Ottawa and have been for a year. Benchmark down 5.2 per cent year over year. 5.4 months of inventory. Median 41 days on market. Sales-to-new-listings at 41.0 per cent.

By geography it gets starker. Ottawa Centre ran 5.6 months of inventory in July, a 39.6 per cent sales-to-new-listings ratio, and sales down 8.3 per cent. Ottawa Suburb West ran 3.0 months and 56.2 per cent. That is the widest spread in the city, and Westboro sits close enough to the line between them that citywide averages tell you almost nothing about your building. OREB said it plainly: condominium apartment conditions stayed soft, particularly in the downtown core.

So 1,441 proposed units are pointed at the one segment already carrying five and a half months of supply.

The train is closer than it has ever been, and still not open

I have written a version of this story four times this summer and it keeps changing shape. In Kanata the station is a line on a map with no money behind it. In Orléans the track is finished and nobody will name an opening date. In Barrhaven the line is fully designed, priced at $4 billion, and parked.

Westboro is the good version. The rail is in the ground. The final piece of track went in near the Westboro platform and crews have moved to interior work: concourse ceiling, drywall, waterproofing the stairwells. Seven new stations west of Tunney's Pasture, Westboro first among them.

It is still not open. City officials have pointed at early 2027, with the contractor handing the project over near the end of this year and testing running through the back half of 2026. That is the most credible transit timeline of any Ottawa neighbourhood I have covered this year. It is also not a date you can close on.

If you own a house in Westboro

Your single-family home is the strongest asset in this entire picture. Single-family was the only major segment with a benchmark increase in July, up 0.6 per cent year over year, at 3.2 months of inventory. Apartments are down 5.2 per cent. Townhouses are down 5.1 per cent.

Do not let anyone price your lot on the zoning envelope. The four-units-as-of-right story is still not fully in force, and I went through the ugly detail on that in July. Unit counts in Neighbourhood zones are precisely what remains stuck at the Tribunal. A builder telling you your lot carries a premium because of a fourplex is quoting you an option, not a permission.

And if you are within sight of the Granite site or the Winston Avenue assembly, sell before the cranes rather than during. Construction shadow is a real discount, and easier to avoid than to argue with.

If you are buying a Westboro condo

Read the pipeline as competition, because that is exactly what it is.

Buying resale, you are competing with 1,441 proposed units for your eventual next buyer, in a segment sitting at 41 days on market. That is not a reason to avoid Westboro. It is a reason to buy on today's comparable sales and nothing else.

Buying preconstruction, the risk that keeps landing on people is the appraisal. You sign at 2026 pricing, you close in 2029 or 2030, and your lender values the unit on closing day rather than signing day. In a segment down 5.2 per cent a year, that gap comes out of your pocket in cash. I ran that math yesterday in the condo appraisal gap post, and Westboro is where it bites hardest.

The short version

Westboro is getting the train, and it is getting roughly 1,441 units of new competition aimed at Ottawa's weakest segment, with the largest chunk exempt from a council vote. Both things are true and they push price in opposite directions.

Buy the house. Be careful with the tower. And read your own building's comparable sales instead of the citywide average, because in Westboro the citywide average is the least useful number on the table. Have a look at what's listed in Westboro right now to see how wide that spread runs.

If you are weighing a specific Westboro address and want to know which of these three sites actually touches it, call me at 613-262-6545 or email fil@613realtor.ca. I would rather spend fifteen minutes on your street than send you another citywide market report.