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Since he switched careers 14 years ago, David Berry — a former physical therapist with the Ottawa Rough Riders and Ottawa Senators — has been a top performer with Remax Absolute Realty.

That makes him a pretty good source for assessing the state of the city’s housing market.

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“About 90 per cent of my sales this year have come after bidding wars,” he said Saturday just before showing a two-bedroom house backing onto Kanata’s busy Campeau Drive. “There’s just so little inventory,” he added.

Photo by Ashley Fraser / Postmedia

In fact, it’s rare that realtors bother with open houses these days as most properties sell very quickly through realtors’ private networks and word of mouth. This particular listing of Berry’s is a slightly tougher sell because of the noise from nearby Campeau Drive. So it’s an open house, and it has attracted a steady stream of interested buyers.

There were fewer than 2,200 residences listed for resale across the city at the end of March and 679 condominiums — down 21 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively, from a year earlier.

The tightness of the inventory is a major annoyance for realtors and buyers alike: realtors because it deprives them of deal flow and, more importantly, gives them fewer options to present. Prospective home buyers, for their part, are reluctant to put their own houses up for sale until they can be sure they’ve got some place to go. When they do take the plunge, they often suffer the stress of having to make multiple offers before one is finally accepted.