Laval homes lead the way again in December

Once again last month, no other region in the vicinity matched the price increases posted by Laval residential real estate.

Housing prices her continued to far outstrip inflation, rising 4.6 percent in December, compared with prices for the same month a year earlier.

The closest any other region came was the South Shore, which posted a 3.7 per cent increase. Montreal Island property prices again remained flat, increasing just 0.3 percent during the same period. North Shore (-0.4 per cent) and Vaudreuil-Soulanges (-1.8 per cent) both saw a slight decline in prices in December.

Laval’s strong performance helped to lift the average property price increase of all the regions in and surrounding Montreal to 2.3 per cent.

“The month of December performed like the average of the previous months,” Greater Montreal Real Estate Board (GMREB) vice-president Diane Ménard said in a statement. “We believe that we are still feeling the impact of the new mortgage insurance rules that came into force in the summer of 2012.”

A steady stream of newcomers fleeing Montreal helped Laval property prices to outpace all others in the area during 2013, despite a decrease in sales volume of 14 percent — the largest drop of any region.

Over the course of 2013, nearly $1.2 billion changed hands in Laval residential real estate transactions, a drop of 12 per cent from a sales volume of $1.36 billion in 2012.

With the December results in, GMREB reported that the median price of a single-family home reached $288,000 in 2013, up two percent from 2012. Condominiums fared even better, with a median price of $211,000 in 2013, a rise of three percent over the year before.

In contrast, median prices on Montreal Island rose one percent last year, while condos prices there fell one percent—the only region to post a decline in prices during 2013, as the metropolis’ ongoing administrative, fiscal and political woes dimmed the draw of the city’s otherwise alluring downtown core.