Ottawa one of the least expensive capital cities for homebuyers, report suggests

File photo of downtown Ottawa. (Photo by Robbie Palmer of Unsplash)

Ottawa is one of the least expensive capital cities for homebuyers, according to numbers crunched by a UK-based insurance company.

The CIA Landlords Insurance study, published Jan. 3, 2023, ranked average house sizes in 30 of the UK's most populous cities and compared the figures globally.

Using price per square metre data from Numbeo.com, a crowd-sourced data aggregator, the agency reported that Ottawa has one of the lowest prices per square metre compared to 22 other global capitals.

Ottawa ranked third for price per square metre to buy a house in the city core at 4,227 GBP, or just under $7,000 CAD (around $650 per square foot). The cheapest homes, of the cities listed in the report, are found in Athens, Greece, which come in at just over $3,700 CAD per sq. m. Brussels, Belgium was second at around $5,600 CAD per sq. m.

London, UK, by comparison, costs nearly $20,000 CAD per sq. m., according to the cited data, while Washington, D.C.'s price came in at around $10,600 per sq. m.

The Numbeo figure used for the report is cited on the page as "price per square meter to buy an apartment in city centre" and is based on the higher end of a range between $4,700 and $8,300. It says data compiled for Ottawa was based on 228 entries from 43 contributors in the past 18 months and was last updated this month.

Canadian homes are also some of the largest, CIA Landlords Insurance claimed. 

Using data on Canadian home sizes from ShrinkMyFootprint.com (which itself cites the Canadian Home Builders' Association as a source), the CIA Landlords UK report said the average home in Ottawa is around 181 sq. m., or 1,948 sq. ft., more than double the size of the average London, UK home at just 72 sq. m. (around 775 sq. ft.).

Canadian homes ranked fourth among global capitals for home size, behind Australia at 214 sq. m. (2,303 sq. ft.), New Zealand at 202 sq. m. (2,174 sq. ft.) and the U.S. at 201 sq. m. (2,163 sq. ft.)