NEW PURVEYORS LAB Ottawa · Canada
Market commentary · August 2026

Your Ottawa home hasn’t sold in two weeks. What does the data actually say?

Two weeks without a sale is a reason to review your listing’s progress, but the calendar alone does not tell you something is wrong. In August 2026, reported median selling times in four Ottawa-region home categories ranged from 27 to 34 days. Fourteen days was earlier than the median in every group.

That is useful context when the initial excitement of listing has given way to a quieter second week. It is also a limited answer: these figures describe homes that sold. They cannot tell us the probability that a home still available today will sell next week.

The practical question at day 14 is whether the evidence supports your current approach.

Where two weeks fits in the Ottawa market

The supplied August reports recorded 786 sales across four property categories:

Reported median days on market · August 2026
Single detached27 days
Freehold townhouse28 days
Apartment condominium34 days
Townhouse condominium34 days

Common scale: 0–40 days. Fourteen days is earlier than every reported median. These are completed sales, not a forecast for unsold listings. Source: PropTx-data report snapshots. The table below gives the same values and sales counts.

Reported August 2026 selling times by home type
Home typeAugust salesMedian days on market
Detached37827 days
Freehold townhouse20728 days
Apartment condominium12834 days
Townhouse condominium7334 days

The median is the middle of the reported selling-time distribution. It is not a deadline, a recommended waiting period or a promise about an individual home.

For example, a detached home that has been available for 14 days cannot be assumed to need another 13 days because the category median was 27. That would turn a summary of completed sales into a forecast the data does not support.

The figures also put statements such as “everything sells in the first two weeks” into perspective. The reported midpoint for each of these sold groups was considerably later.

Make day 14 a review point

A useful two-week conversation with your agent should connect the listing’s exposure, buyer response and competing properties. Three questions can organize that review:

Those questions evaluate the individual listing. The market reports do not contain showing activity, buyer feedback or property-specific pricing assessments.

The two-week date can structure that conversation. It does not supply the decision on its own.

Does reaching two weeks mean you should reduce the price?

The available data does not establish a universal day-14 price-reduction rule.

We can describe selling times and how sale prices compared with asking prices. We cannot yet follow a complete group of homes available on day 14 through every later price change, withdrawal, relisting and sale.

Without that history, we cannot reliably say what proportion reduced their price after two weeks, how many then sold, or whether a reduction caused a better outcome.

The same limit applies to the opposite advice: these medians do not establish that keeping the price unchanged and waiting will work. Either decision needs evidence about the property and its competition.

Selling below asking is a different question

August’s reported below-asking shares ranged from 77.5% for detached homes to 85.9% for apartment condominiums.

But selling below asking and reducing an asking price are different events. A home can sell below an asking price that never changed. It can also sell at a revised asking price after a reduction.

Those percentages do not measure how many sellers reduced their price. They also do not show that homes sold below asking because they took longer to sell. The reports do not specify whether their asking-price comparison uses the original or a later list price.

What should a seller take from this?

Being unsold after 14 days, by itself, is not enough evidence to conclude that an Ottawa listing is performing poorly. August’s reported median selling times were longer in every category examined.

Use the two-week checkpoint to ask what has been learned since launch, whether the competitive picture has changed, and what evidence will guide the next decision.

Source and methodology

Source: supplied August 2026 reports based on PropTx data. Figures describe completed sales in the reports’ selected Ottawa region. Exact day-count and relisting conventions remain unconfirmed. These aggregate measures do not establish an individual listing’s probability of selling.

Cite this edition

Richling, Matt. “Your Ottawa home hasn’t sold in two weeks. What does the data actually say?” New Purveyors Lab. August 2026 edition, published September 10, 2026. Data source: PropTx. Permanent edition.

Research library · Ottawa-region time to sell · Sales below asking