Trust me, folks: you’re not going to believe the results today.

And, spoiler alert: we did not have a repeat champion, so apologies to blog reader Marina, who won our game in 2024.

For those who are new to this thread, here’s the TRB post and the game we’re discussing today:

February 3rd, 2025: “The 2025 TRB Real Estate Prediction Game”

So let’s get to it!

1) What will be the average home price for 2025? (point scored if guess is +/- 2%)

You know what really drives me crazy about the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board?

Wait.  I have to choose my words carefully here, or I might get blacklisted…

All jokes (not jokes…) aside, my biggest pet peeve is that TRREB is constantly revising previously published data, and it wreaks havoc with my historical charts!

I understand that publishing monthly data for March on the 4th of April might not capture every sale, lease, termination, etc., so I understand the need to revise the data once it’s complete.  But since I compile my data at the end of every month, by the time we get to the next year, my previous year’s data is wrong.

This brings me to the average home price, which was recorded as $1,117,623 in 2024, but has now been changed to $1,120,244.

It’s a wash, right?

But it’s annoying, and if you’re ever reading TRB and you see a stat that’s not consistent with what TRREB is publishing, now you know the reason.

In any event, our very first question in the TRB Real Prediction Game was about the average home price in 2025, coming off the previous five years that looked like this:

The question specified plus or minus 2%.

The average sale price in 2025 was $1,067,735.

That means our range is set at $1,046,380 – $1,089,090.

The following contestants receive a point:

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2) Which month of the year will represent the highest average home price? (point scored for correct month)

We saw an average home price of $1,107,463 in April and $1,101,691 in June.

Those were the closest to the eventual winner: May.

May saw an average home price of $1,120,879, so the following contestants receive a point:

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3) Will any individual month’s average home price top $1,200,000? (point scored for correct Y/N)

This wasn’t even close, as per Question #2 above.

The highest monthly price in 2024 was $1,165,691 in May, so we would have had to see a 2.9% increase on that figure to top $1,200,000.

And that clearly didn’t happen, so the following contestants receive a point:

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4) How many total sales will there be in 2025? (point scored if guess is +/- 5%)

This one is wild!

Coming off a 2024 where there were 67,984 sales, which were up from the all-time low of 66,315 in 2023, most of us thought that sales would increase in 2025.

Of the thirty-two contestants who entered the game:

-average prediction: 72,613
-median prediction: 75,000
-high prediction: 83,312
-low prediction: 42,000

The final tally for 2025 is in, and we saw 62,433 sales in 2025.

That means our range is set at 59,311 – 65,555.

The following contestants receive a point:

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5) Which month of the year will represent the highest number of total sales? (point scored for correct month)

This one is really, really close!

May: 6,244
June: 6,243

As I noted in our first point, TRREB has a habit of updating numbers as the year goes on, and I’m sure that when the respective Market Watch features are published in May and June of 2026, those figures above will be different.

Since any revision of this data would add/subtract points in our game, and could affect the outcome, I’ll have to be extra diligent and show without question that this is the data we’re given:

That’s May, with 6,244 sales.

And here’s June with 6,243 sales:

For correctly predicting May, the following contestants receive a point:

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6) Will any individual month of the year see more than 8,000 sales? (point scored for correct Y/N)

The highest number of sales we saw in any month in 2024 was 7,114.

In order to see 8,000 sales in a given month in 2025, we would have had to see a 12.5% increase above 2024’s high.

That’s hardly unreasonable, especially if you felt that we’d see an increase from the yearly sales figure in 2024.

As a result, twenty-one of the thirty-two contestants answered “Yes.”

And they were wrong!

Here are the contestants receiving a point for answering in the negative:

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7) How many total new listings will there be in 2025? (point scored if guess is +/- 10%).

Again, we run the risk of TRREB revising the data in 2026, but as it stands right now, adding up the monthly totals for each month in 2025 looks like this:

That means our range is set at 167,095 – 204,191.

The following contestants receive a point:

Rather shockingly, Oscar’s prediction of 276,888 was not in the running…

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8) How many individual months will see more than 20,000 active listings (point scored for correct number)

Here’s how many times in the last five years we saw a month with more than 20,000 active listings:

2020: 0
2021: 0
2022: 0
2023: 0
2024: 7

Pretty wild, right?

Seven months in 2024 saw more than 20,000 active listings, and thus answers to this question for 2025 would be based around 2024’s activity.

Here’s how people answered:

0 Months: 3 contestants
1 Month: 0 contestants
2 Months: 1 contestant
3 Months: 1 contestant
4 Months: 7 contestants
5 Months: 5 contestants
6 Months: 4 contestants
7 Months: 6 contestants
8 Months: 4 contestants
9 Months: 0 contestants
10 Months: 1 contestant

Boy, it would be really ironic if we saw one month or nine months, and no contestant scored a point, right?

Here are the active listing numbers for 2025:

I’m no mathematician, but that looks like nine months to me!

Damn!

No contestant received a point.

But we were so caught off guard by the sheer amount of inventory in 2025, which as you might assume, saw an all-time high.

Active listings refer to the number of properties listed on the last day of every month, so totalling the monthly numbers is an odd metric, but I wanted to provide this just to put last year in perspective:

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9) Will any individual month of the year see an average 416 condo price higher than the ‘peak’ price of $767,064 recorded in May of 2024? (point scored for correct Y/N)

As our contest has continued through 2025, the average 416 condo price has declined.

That peak of $731,232 from June never came close to challenging the $767,064 recorded in May of 2024.

We had 27 of 32 contestants answer “No” for this question, so a point is awarded to the following:

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10) What will the Bank of Canada policy rate be after the last announcement on December 10th, 2025?) (point scored for correct number)

On January 1st, 2025, the Bank of Canada policy rate sat at 3.25%

Here is how the predictions in our game were set:

We saw four interest rate cuts in January, March, September, and October, each of twenty-five basis points.

That means the policy rate finished the year at 2.25%, and the following nine contestants received a point:

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Conclusion:

Folks, this wasn’t even close.

Kudos to BEAN, Derek, J, James S, and JL for getting 5 points.

And really, really great show from Quiet Bard in getting 6 points.  I’m sure he and I will chat about this the next time we’re out looking at investment opportunities.

But nobody came even close to our resident clairvoyant, who deliberately answered one question wrong just to pretend that he’s human.

Vancouver Keith dominated our game with 9 points.

How is that even possible?

For the record, I only got four points myself, so what the heck do I know about real estate?

Since the grand prize was a $500 gift card to LCBO (with the “O” standing for “Ontario”), is Vancouver Keith disqualified because he lives in British Columbia?

KIDDING!

Keith – please email me at da**********@**************te.com, and I’ll arrange to get the prize sent your way.

Thank you to the other thirty-one TRB readers!

Shall we play again in 2026?