Condo listings soaring
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Come spring of 2025,
The once-hot condo market has cooled dramatically, with listings soaring in recent months, but the spate of listings could be the “calm before the storm.”
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The 2024 Re/Max Canada Condominium Report attributes the influx of supply to sellers’ expectations that demand will pick up in the fourth quarter of this year and early 2025 as the Bank of Canada is expected to further cut interest rates.
“High interest rates and stringent lending policies pummelled first-time buyers in recent years, preventing many from reaching their home-ownership goal, despite having to pay record high rental costs that mirrored mortgage payments,” says Re/Max Canada president Christopher Alexander.
“The current lull is the calm before the storm. Come spring of 2025, pent-up demand is expected to fuel stronger market activity, particularly at entry-level price points, as both first-time buyers and investors once again vie for affordable condominium product.”
The report found the year-over-year growth in inventory listings was highest in the Fraser Valley at 52.8 per cent, followed by Greater Toronto (52.8 per cent), City of Calgary (52.4 per cent), Ottawa (44.5 per cent), Edmonton (17.7 per cent), Halifax Regional Municipality (8.1 per cent) and Vancouver (7.3 per cent).
Despite the influx of listings, values have held up “surprisingly well” in most markets, according to the report, pointing to gains posted in Calgary (15 per cent), Edmonton (four per cent), Ottawa (2.3 per cent), Vancouver (1.9 per cent), Fraser Valley (1.9 per cent) and Halifax (1.2 per cent).
The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is the outlier, with the average price dropping two per cent. Though Toronto may be the last to emerge from “more sluggish conditions,” prices have likely “bottomed out” and that’s “usually evidence that a turnaround is in sight,” the report suggests.
Close to 16,800 condo apartments and townhomes changed hands in the GTA between January and August 2024, down from 18,263 sales during the same period in 2023. The average price now sits at $732,648 for apartments and townhomes, down from $747,039 during the same period in 2023, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board.
In each market, there are condominium pockets that defied overall trends. In the GTA, condominium sales were up by double digits in the first eight months of 2024 in midtown communities such as Yonge-Eglinton, Humewood-Cedarvale and Forest Hill South, for example.
“The low-rise and freehold market is expressing a lot more activity than the resale condo market so as the activity increases with interest rate reductions,” says Tim Syrianos, broker at Re/Max Ultimate Realty Inc. in Toronto.
“The most important thing to realize is that once prices start to inch up in the freehold market, there will be more people looking at the resale condo market as a point of entry so the opportunity to educate yourself on what is available at this time is very important compared to waiting until the new year.”
And his message to sellers? “It’s going to take quite some time for values to realize an appreciation, so pricing based on current market conditions is extremely important.”
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