How Is The GTA Condo Market Faring In 2026?

I’m currently working with two condo investors.

No, that’s not an oxymoron, and yes, you read that correctly.

“Condo investor.”

It sounds like an oxymoron in today’s market, as we’re routinely reading that “investors have left the market,” and yet I’m here today to tell you that it’s not.

One of my clients, who is a referral from a long-time blog reader and big fan of TRB, is looking to buy 4-5 condos by year’s end.  He’s looking for downtown units, 500+ square feet, located on prime streets, and in buildings that are less than 15 years old.  He’s purchased one so far, and we’re looking at another next week.

My other investor is a literal “mom and pop” who, to be frank, is quite well off.  They have a ton of money in the stock market, and with the DOW over 50,000, they’ve decided that buying 3-4 downtown condos is diversifying for the long term.

Yesterday, I went to book a showing for a condo in the Distillery District which I think has tremendous value.  I don’t typically advise buying a unit that’s already tenanted, but this tenant is paying $2,400 per month and wants to stay long term, and I believe the rent on this condo would be $2,200 today.

I booked for 1:00pm next Wednesday.

Within an hour, I received a notification requesting that I show the condo at 6:30pm on Thursday.

I mean, tell me that 1:00pm doesn’t work and that you want me to come at 1:30pm, but over five hours later on a completely different day?  That’s a big ask!

I called the agent, who owns the condo and is trying to unload it, and he was absolutely zero help.

“I’m not gonna bug the tenant,” he told me.  “Just go Thursday at 6:30pm.”

I politely explained that my client was not able to go any day after 5pm, and he said, “That’s too bad.  It’s a great unit.  You’re missing out.”

This condo has been listed off and on for eight months.  It’s now on its third price.

For this agent/owner to tell me, “You’re missing out,” shows that he has no clue what type of market we’re working in.

He should be moving heaven and earth to get my investor and me into that condo, but he didn’t even try.

That’s too bad.

He’s missing out…

When we met in this space three months ago, the 2026 condo market was rounding into form.

Sales were sluggish, but better than 2025, and the absorption rate in the market was higher as well.

But most people don’t want to talk about sales, listings, and absorption rates.

They just want to talk about prices.

So let’s start with prices first, for a change.

Here’s the 416 average condo sale price over the last three years:

A lot changes in three months, doesn’t it?

Whereas the first six months might have told us that the trend is ticking back up, it only took one month – September, for that to change.

The average 416 condo price increased from August to September in 2024 and 2025, but for some reason, it declined in August.

This is only one month, but that’s a really big outlier for me.

Here’s a look at 416 new listings:

New listings were down year-over-year by 19.0%, 13.2%, and 10.4% in July, August, and September, respectively.

This is consistent with what we saw through Q1 and Q2.

The following graph shows us that new listings are well below 2025 and 2024 levels:

Say what you want about the “price trough,” and whether or not we’ve hit bottom.

But when it comes to inventory, I would say we’re well past the peak, which will be represented by 2024 and 2025.

The pattern was similar in the 905:

Listings were down by 16.2%, 15.2%, and 20.4%, respectively, in July, August, and September.

This is a larger drop-off than we saw in the 416, and the chart shows us that September inventory was actually quite “low” compared to the last three years:

I know that’s a stretch to suggest that inventory is “low.”

Yes, it’s much higher than in 2022, but it’s well below the three-year moving average.

As for sales, consider that when 2026 began, year-over-year sales were lower in January and February, before picking back up again in March through June.

That trend reversed in Q3:

We saw higher year-over-year sales in March, April, May, June, and July.

However, sales were down 0.6% in August and 6.0% in September.

As I’ve written several times so far this fall, we have to remember that Labour Day fell on September 1st in 2025 and it fell on September 7th in 2026, so sales were going to be sluggish comparatively.

But I’ll be very interested to see how October sales look.

This chart really muddies the water (by next year, we’ll remove 2022 and that crazy peak in March, and this chart will be smoother), but any way you want to look at it, sales have retreated:

In the 905, sales were fewer and further between.

Year-over-year sales figures were down in all three of July, August, and September:

Down 6.9%, 7.1%, and 13.1% in July, August, and September, respectively.

Having said that, the graph for the 905 looks just like the 416:

I really need to get rid of that 2022 data.

My OCD can’t handle it.

Alright, so that brings us to the absorption rate, which is the ratio of sales to new listings.

In Q1 and Q2, the absorption rate was substantially improved.

That trend did continue into Q3:

While we started 2026 with a lower year-over-year absorption rate in January, the absorption rate has continued to climb.

In June, that 38.6% absorption rate was a whopping 10.9 percentage points higher than the 27.7% recorded in June of 2025.

In September, that advantage dropped to only 1.4%.

But that 28.8% absorption rate in September is still higher than 2023, 2024, and 2025 respectively:

Should we take our graphs down to four years starting in 2027?  Maybe this is too much of a good thing…

The pattern in the 905 was similar:

Same idea here: the absorption rate was lower on a year-over-year basis in January, but has been higher every month since.

For those who are newer to the Toronto real estate market and the hobby of real estate analysis, I’m sure you can’t imagine a time when the 905 absorption rate was 80%, like this:

It almost looks like a mistake, right?

And yet, even though the market turned in early 2022, we still saw a much higher absorption rate in the spring and summer of 2023.

What a wild ride that was!

And you know what?

What a wild ride the market still is.

Most real estate agents out there absolutely hate the current condo market, and while I’m not going to lie and say that I wouldn’t prefer that it was 2021 out there, I also enjoy rising to a challenge.

A slew of real estate agents who were licensed between 2017 and 2022 only ever saw a red-hot condo market where a 495-square-foot unit would attract multiple offers.

In today’s market, it takes a certain type of agent to withstand the misery.

And while not every agent will come out of this next year or the year after, those who do will be better off for it.

Alright, time to go sell a house!

Listen to this – it’s 5:33pm on Wednesday evening, and after having a property sit on the market for six weeks, we received an offer, and now a second offer just came in.

Now that is wild…