The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area new condo market had the slowest quarter since 1995, with just 533 sales, according to numbers from research firm Urbanation, released Tuesday.
“It’s about as slow as it can get. There just isn’t really isn’t demand right now for buying presale condominiums,” said Shaun Hildebrand, president of Urbanation.
“The investment economics don’t really work.”
There were only 215 new condo sales in the city of Toronto, in the first quarter of the year, the lowest level since 1990.
Prices of new condos were down seven per cent from the same period last year to an average of $1,151 per square foot.
“Rents are declining. Resale prices are declining. There’s a record amount of inventory on the market,” added Hildebrand.
The condo market was already slow, he said, and the uncertainty around the U.S. trade war made it worse.
“Consumer confidence has taken a huge hit,” he said, noting investors are the primary purchasers of preconstruction condos. “When they become inactive, it dramatically slows down the market, as we’re seeing.”
Only two new projects (275 units) launched presales in the first quarter of 2025 in the region. Since the start of 2024, 28 presale projects and 5,734 units were either put on hold, cancelled, placed in receivership or converted to purpose-built rental.
That includes four projects with 1,042 units in the first quarter of 2025.
It’s hard for developers to drop their prices by too much, Hildebrand added, due to other costs, so the unsold inventory piles up.
There were almost 24,000 unsold new condo units in the GTHA in the first quarter of 2025, up six per cent from a year ago and 58 per cent above the 10-year average.
“In fact, we haven’t seen this number of completed and unsold units since the 1990s and that’s projected to grow,” Hildebrand said.
The data doesn’t capture what’s happening in the assignment market, where mainly investors try to off-load units before closing. Nor does it include buyers who are not closing on units and in litigation, he said.
A recent Star investigation found almost 130 lawsuits across two condo towers and five presale condo projects by developers against buyers who defaulted on closings.
The slowdown will not stay confined to condos, Hildebrand said, as they are typically the first step on the property ladder.
“The condo market is a huge part of the overall housing market in the GTHA. So if that segment of the market is slowing down, it’s going to have some impact on the rest of the market as well.”
