Purchase activity has now fallen for 13 months in a row, new data shows
New home sales in the Greater Toronto Area have hit their lowest point in over a decade, marking 13 consecutive months of record-breaking declines.
October's 570 units sold represented a sharp 29% drop from October 2024 and fell 81% below the 10-year average of 3,033 units.
The collapse reflects a market in crisis. Single-family homes led the decline with 322 sales in October, down 41% year-over-year and 63% below historical norms.
Condominium apartments fared slightly better but still fell 2% year-over-year, with 248 units sold, a figure 88% below the 10-year average.
"Only under very specific conditions and price points is product moving," said Edward Jegg, research manager at Altus Group, the official source for BILD's new home market intelligence.
"This underscores the need to bring costs back in line to get customers off the sidelines."
End users are showing an interest in larger units, according to DLC Clear Trust broker Micky Khaneka, but demand is continuing to plummet for small condos built specifically to be owned by investors and rented out.https://t.co/eVHRzqg5ne
— Canadian Mortgage Professional Magazine (@CMPmagazine) November 15, 2025
Inventory crisis deepens as builder confidence collapses
The inventory crisis deepens alongside collapsed demand. Total remaining inventory climbed to 21,241 units in October—the highest level on record. That represents a 23.5-month supply based on average sales over the past 12 months. Only one new single-family project launched during the month, signaling builder hesitancy in a deteriorating market.
Pricing tells a complicated story. The benchmark price for new condominium apartments edged up 2.5% to $1,031,764 year-over-year, while new single-family home prices fell 7.4% to $1,434,447 over the same period.
In newly tracked Simcoe County, single-family homes averaged $1,131,591 with 44 units sold and zero condominiums moving.
Government action needed as market faces structural crisis
BILD called for urgency from government. "How many months of record-breaking lows must pass before we see concrete actions to reduce the costs added to new homes?" said Justin Sherwood, chief operating officer at BILD.
"The federal government's approach, including HST relief only for first-time buyers, is far too limited. We welcome Premier Ford's recent call for the HST exemption to apply to any purchaser of a new home, not only first-time buyers."
The broader resale market tells a similar story. The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board reported 6,138 total home sales in October across the GTA—down 9.5% year-over-year—with the MLS Home Price Index benchmark falling 5% year-over-year.
What happens next could reshape the region's housing pipeline for years. With builder confidence evaporating and government action limited, mortgage professionals face growing pressure from clients caught between steep affordability gaps and vanishing new supply.
“We’ve seen that prices are still down since the summer,” Taz Zaide, mortgage agent at 6ix Mortgage Group, told Canadian Mortgage Professional. “We’ve started doing appraisals now for properties that are coming up for closings and what we’re seeing is that the values are coming in lower than when they purchased back in June, July, even August.
“So we’ve still seen a little bit of a dip in price. And I do still think that right now, buyers have that advantage because sellers are desperate to sell as they’re still worried that things might not go back up again.”
The 256,000 jobs supported by the building and renovation industry and $39.3 billion in investment value hang in the balance.
According to RBC Economics, the Toronto area has been “stuck in the last three months with home resales close to 25% below pre-pandemic norms.”
The composite MLS Home Price Index has declined about 5% from a year ago, with little urgency among buyers as inventory remains high and prices continue to soften.
While other cities such as Montreal and Calgary saw modest upticks in resales, Toronto, along with Edmonton, Regina, and Winnipeg, recorded declines.
RBC’s analysis pointed to “tariff-related economic uncertainty, grimmer job prospects, lower immigration and little urgency to strike deals when inventory is high, and prices decline.”
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