After a year of sluggish sales and cancelled projects, the condo market in Canada’s largest city is showing signs of recovery.

Drawn by lower prices, Tyler Florian was able to buy his first property back in February. He purchased a two-bedroom condo in Fort York, a high-density neighbourhood in downtown Toronto.

“My real estate agent was saying it was almost like 2017 prices,” he said.

The 29-year-old financial planner had previously been living with his parents. “The question was: Do I just move downtown and rent because I want to live downtown, or do I stay another year and eventually have, you know, enough savings to buy?”

The First Home Savings Account and the RRSP Home Buyers’ Plan, coupled with lower interest rates, helped Florian acquire his first property.

“It’s good for people looking to get into the market. Of course, we don’t know if it’s the bottom or not, but it seems like it’s a good time,” he said.

Realtor Thomas Delespierre says Toronto’s condo segment has shifted from a seller’s market — where units would sell in less than two weeks — to a buyer’s market, where condos can sit on the market for four to six months.

“Buyers have a lot more choices, they can negotiate more,” he said. “It’s much harder for sellers.”

Sellers hoping for a rebound

New data released by the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) suggests the slump in the condo market may be coming to an end.

Last month, 1,054 units were sold in the city, a 14.4 per cent increase year-over-year. Condo prices, however, continued to shrink. They fell by 6.4 per cent over the same period — averaging just over $665,000.

TRREB’s chief information officer Jason Mercer says lower prices and borrowing costs helped boost activity in that housing segment. “We’ve been seeing a little bit of momentum, some people who had been on the sidelines waiting for affordability to improve [before] moving back into the marketplace,” he said.

However, stiffer competition between buyers could push condo prices back up again, Mercer says, especially with far fewer new units being built.

This trend isn’t unique to Toronto. Nearly all surrounding suburbs and municipalities in Ontario’s southwest also saw declines in prices and sales.

After buying her dream home, Barb Guglielmi and her husband wanted to sell their condo in Barrie, north of Toronto, to free up funds.

“We had it on the market for about six months,” she said.

After reducing the asking price, Guglielmi says they still did not get any offers. Similar units in her area were selling in the low $600,000s — significantly less than she purchased hers for. “We couldn’t accept such a loss,” the condo owner said.

Her realtor suggested renting it out as a stopgap measure, but now “the renting is going so well, we might consider it longer term,” Guglielmi said.

Most condo markets across the country have felt the dip, according to data from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), which calculates a benchmark price for different housing types.

Condo prices in the Greater Toronto Area peaked in 2022 and have since dropped by about 25 per cent, while in the Greater Vancouver Area, they peaked in fall 2023 and have since fallen by about 10 per cent. 

In Calgary, condo prices peaked in September 2024, fuelled by strong population growth in Alberta, and have since dropped 10 per cent. Montreal, on the other hand, has experienced steady, moderate growth in condo prices over the past three years.

Spacious condos in greater demand

The Daniels Corporation, one of the largest real estate developers in the Toronto area, currently has four condominium projects under construction. “At the height of the market, Daniels would have had probably eight to 10 condo projects on the go at any one time,” the company’s president Jacob Cohen said.

“It’s been a little bit quieter from a condo perspective.”

Cohen says the mix of units in his condominium buildings has evolved over the years. A project that might have been 30 per cent studios in the past is now perhaps 15 per cent studios. 

“[We] err more on the side of one bedrooms, one plus dens, two bedrooms and maybe some larger-sized units,” he said. 

However, he says there will always be some demand for studios. “There are students [and] young professionals starting their careers that are not going to be able to afford a two-bedroom right off the bat or a two plus den or a townhouse,” he said.

Cautious optimism

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation noted a decline in housing starts in Toronto last year, mostly due to multi-unit projects. That’s still the case in its latest report, published in April. “Housing starts are showing signs of slowing down, in line with building permits issued in the recent past,” the report says.

At least nine condo projects in Toronto were cancelled in 2025, according to real estate firm Urbanation. A trend it says could grow in the next few months, as many projects struggle with sales.

“Ultimately, the existing supply is going to get absorbed,” Mercer said. “All these people are going to require a place to live.”

Pouyan Safapour, president of Devron Developments, remains cautiously optimistic. Pre-construction sales for his upcoming building — the 1 Marlborough project in Rosedale — will begin this fall.

Generally speaking, about 70 per cent of units must be sold for a building project to secure financing and for construction to move forward. “Reaching that threshold for sales is way more challenging,” Safapour said.

The massive withdrawal of investors is complicating the task. “The investor-buyer has completely fled the market, and what we as developers now need to focus on is the end user,” said Cohen, from the Daniels Corporation.

“People who are going to be buying are going to be living in these buildings, so we need to be a little bit smarter and strategic,” he said.

Safapour sees this as a positive shift in the market. “That’s sort of the silver lining, I guess, in this correction.”