Real estate broker Nina Miller advertised the home in the paper, but the offers arrived so quickly she didn’t have the chance to even put up a “for sale” sign outside the Hampstead cottage.

Despite the recent slowdown in Montreal’s real estate market, Miller’s phone buzzed with inquiries last month as soon as she’d listed the renovated, four-bedroom house for sale mid-week. She showed it that weekend, while her clients were off for a quick getaway in the Laurentians. By the time they got back, she’d received a conditional offer on the home for just over $1.1 million — the full listing price.

“There are still some homes that sell right away,” Miller said. “There are buyers for turnkey homes. And it (the Hampstead home) was priced properly. What happens often is that people put their properties out for $200,000, or even $300,000 too high. It takes a much longer time to sell because it puts (buyers) off.”

That the home took a week to sell was not a one-off fluke, buyers, evaluators, mortgage and real estate brokers say, even at a time when the inventory of Montreal homes for sale is at its highest point since the late 1990s. Indeed, brokers point to several cases of Montreal Island properties selling for full asking-price within days — or even within hours at some new condo towers.

They suggest the current market slowdown is due not just to the highly-publicized tightening of rules on insured mortgages and a vast condo supply inflated by years of near-record construction — but also to some extent, by greedy sellers. Indeed, a Gazette analysis of around 70,000 Montreal homes sold by brokers since 2008 shows the gap between average asking and selling prices widens as the real estate market gets weaker, suggesting some sellers are still making unrealistic demands following years of rapidly climbing property values.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/