Housing Check: Ottawa home sales fall 10.7% in October

Home sales in Ottawa fell 10.7 per cent in October from a year earlier to 1,048, the third-lowest October total since 2016, even as sales rose 3.8 per cent from September, the Ottawa Real Estate Board (OREB) said in its monthly report.

This is Housing Check, our weekly look at one Canadian housing market. This week is Ottawa. Earlier stops include Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto.

The average sale price was $678,512, down 4.5 per cent from a year earlier and 1.0 per cent from September, OREB said. The median price was $622,000, down 3.9 per cent from October 2025. The MLS Home Price Index composite benchmark, which tracks homes with consistent characteristics, was $616,900, down 1.3 per cent from a year ago.

Sales fell in all three major property types from last October: single-family sales dropped 12.5 per cent to 558, townhouse sales fell 3.0 per cent to 350 and apartment sales fell 23.3 per cent to 115.

New listings totalled 2,382, down 1.2 per cent from a year earlier and 18.6 per cent from September. Active listings stood at 4,582, down 4.8 per cent from September but up 6.4 per cent from October 2025, the second-highest October inventory level since 2016, according to the board.

The sales-to-new-listings ratio rose to 44.0 per cent from 34.5 per cent in September, and months of inventory eased to 4.4 from 4.8. Both measures still pointed to softer conditions than a year earlier, when the ratio was 48.7 per cent and months of inventory stood at 3.7, OREB said. The board noted that much of the improvement came from fewer new listings, a usual pattern in the fall.

Homes sold for an average of 97.5 per cent of their listing price, down from 97.9 per cent a year earlier. The median time on the market was 25.5 days.

“October brought some welcome relief for sellers, with a modest increase in sales and fewer new listings helping to ease some of the pressure we’ve seen in recent months,” OREB president Tami Eades said. “However, buyers continue to have considerable choice, and market conditions remain softer than a year ago.”

On rents, the Rentals.ca and Urbanation National Rent Report for October, released Nov. 5, said asking rents in Ottawa fell 1.9 per cent from a year earlier. Across Canada, the average asking rent was $2,036, down 3.2 per cent. We did not find an Ottawa dollar figure in the published release.

On borrowing costs, the Bank of Canada raised its key rate to 2.5 per cent on Oct. 28, its first increase since 2023. We did not verify posted lender mortgage rates this week.

On rules, OREB said in a statement on the federal budget that, starting Feb. 1, 2027, newly built three- and four-unit properties will be able to get insured mortgage financing of up to 90 per cent of their value, with no maximum property-value cap or owner-occupancy requirement. Our Budget 2026 explainer covers the rest of the budget, and we also track Ottawa’s most expensive homes for sale.

Through the first 10 months of 2026, 11,335 Ottawa properties sold, down 7.3 per cent from the same period in 2025, OREB said. Total dollar volume was about $7.9 billion, down 8.0 per cent.

Photo: Downtown Ottawa seen from Parliament Hill, file photo by Salwa Farwaneh Dameh, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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