GTA home sales saw a slight increase in March as selling prices dropped compared to a year ago, improving affordability as the spring market kicks off.
Sales were up 1.7 per cent year over year while new listings were down 16.7 per cent, indicating that market conditions have tightened, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board’s (TRREB) March report, published Tuesday morning.
“It’s encouraging to see an uptick in March home sales compared to last month and last year. This suggests that an increasing number of GTA households are looking to take advantage of improved affordability as we move into the spring market,” TRREB president Daniel Steinfeld said the report.
The average selling price was $1.01 million, down 6.7 per cent from the same time last year. Since the February 2022 peak, the average GTA sales price has dropped by 24 per cent.
The sales-to-new-listing ratio is 34 per cent indicating a buyers’ market, where buyers have more negotiating power on pricing for the property.
But prices have gone up gradually over the last several months.
While it’s too hard to say if prices have “bottomed out,” market conditions have tightened and once sales outpace listings, prices will level out and potentially go higher by the end of the year, said Jason Mercer, TRREB’s chief information officer.
“Buyers continued to benefit from substantial negotiating power on price across major market segments in the last month,” he said.
“This explains why benchmark and average selling prices were down year-over-year. However, if market conditions continue to tighten, as they did in March, selling prices could start levelling off as we move through the remainder of 2026.”
Prices were down for all property types with semi-detached homes seeing the greatest price decline at 9.5 per cent year over year, followed by condos at 9 per cent, while detached and townhomes both decreased 6.4 per cent.
Sales were down the most for semi-detached homes at 6.9 per cent, followed by townhomes at 1.7 per cent.
But condos and detached homes saw a year-over-year increase at 1.7 per cent and 5.2 per cent, respectively.
Over the last quarter there have been improvements on affordability and first time home buyers could be entering the condo market again as prices are now within reach for a growing number of entry-level buyers, Mercer said.
And for move-up buyers who wanted to jump into the detached market, as more homes come online at lower price points, it’s allowing for more upward mobility in the market, he added.
While sales were up compared to March 2025, it was still well below March’s average sales numbers for the last 10 years.
“It’s more than just affordability that’s motivating people’s decisions,” said Mercer.
“There’s still uncertainty in the broad economic sphere around our trade relationship with the U.S. and how will that pan out over next number of months, as well as potential implications of geopolitics in the Middle East, continuing to place many on the sidelines.”
