Sales of new condominium apartments in Toronto are sliding to lows not seen in three decades, according to the latest
condo market survey
from Urbanation Inc.
 

Across the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA), 502 new condo apartments were sold in the second quarter of 2025. This marked a decline of 10 per cent from the previous quarter and a 69 per cent plunge from the same period in 2024.
 

Urbanation Inc., which provides condo and rental market research for the Ontario and Quebec regions, noted that the second quarter of the year is typically the strongest period for new condo sales, and GTHA activity in the second quarter of 2025 was 91 per cent below the average of the past decade. 

“We’ve seen sales slow for four years now, and the decline just keeps getting deeper and deeper,” said Shaun Hildebrand, president of Urbanation. “I would say that the market has gone from bad to terrible.”
 

Hildebrand said there were only 1,060 sales in the first six months of the year, whereas a typical year would see around 10,000 sales. “The market is basically functioning at 10 per cent of its normal volume.”
 

This activity may have skewed so low due to Toronto sales in particular. There were only 170 sales of new condominium apartments in the city of Toronto during the second quarter of 2025, down 29 per cent from the previous quarter and 77 per cent from the same period last year.
 

“You’d have to go back to the early 1990s to see sales levels that low,” said Hildebrand. Outside of Toronto, sales inched up slightly quarter-over-quarter, he noted. 

Across the GTHA, inventory swelled to a record high of
2,478 new condo apartments completed and available for purchase as of the second quarter of 2025, a 102 per cent surge from 2024. Asking prices for completed developer-held inventory averaged $1,212 per square foot, down six per cent year-over-year and 16 per cent from the market peak reached two years ago.
 

In Toronto, the total number of completed and unsold units was 1,399 in the second quarter of 2025, up 43 per cent from a year ago.

However, unsold inventory across all stages of development in the GTHA is declining for the first time in more than three years, dipping three per cent from the record-high reached last year to 24,045 units in the second quarter of 2025.
Hildebrand said developers are pumping the brakes on pre-sale projects given the slowdown in sales.
 

He noted that in 2024, close to 10 per cent of units closed in the developer’s name as opposed to an individual purchaser.

One key problem is that appraisals for pre-sale units have fallen short, so some buyers are failing to close on their purchases due to higher prices, he said.
 Another
issue is buyers no longer being able to carry a mortgage due to higher interest rates.

In the GTHA, only three projects (891 units) launched for pre-sales in the second quarter, while four projects (719 units) were cancelled, totalling 20 projects and 4,360 units cancelled since 2024.

Since the start of 2024 in Toronto, nine projects have been cancelled, while eight projects have been converted to rental.
 

Urbanation forecasts completions to decline further into the post-2026 period due to a collapse in condo construction starts. These starts amounted to 1,276 units in the second quarter of 2025, down 57 per cent from a year ago and 84 per cent from two years ago.
 

Hildebrand expects more project cancellations throughout the rest of the year as pre-construction apartments are struggling to attract buyers.
 

Tom Storey, a Toronto-based sales representative with Royal LePage Signature Realty, said the market for pre-construction condo sales is typically driven by investors as opposed to individual purchasers who would need to wait four or five years to move into their units while they’re under construction.
 

But investors aren’t seeing cash flow and capital appreciation in the Toronto condo market right now, which has depressed demand for new properties and is leading developers to pull back on projects.
 

There are broader economic repercussions to project cancellations, including increased layoffs within the construction industry.
 

“Real estate’s a huge part of the Toronto economy, so when condo construction falls as much as it has, it’s had a pretty wide-reaching impact on unemployment figures,” said Hildebrand, adding that Toronto has a relatively high unemployment rate compared to the rest of the country.
 

As of June, the Toronto unemployment rate was at 8.7 per cent, compared to 6.9 per cent nationally.

“The market is going to remain challenged for at least another couple of years,” said Hildebrand.  “I think if condo prices decline by another 10 per cent and we see a few more interest rate cuts, that will start to bring more buyers back into the market.”
 

Still, Hildebrand said he doesn’t expect to see the same level of sales activity that occurred over most of the past decade, especially as buyers have been burned by purchasing pre-construction projects in the past.
 

Storey said that in the short term he expects condo prices, especially for smaller units, to decline. But he is concerned that, with relatively few new projects being launched today, there could be a major reduction in supply after 2027 or 2028.
 

• Email: slouis@postmedia.com