Angelina Sivitskaya was nervous to sell her condo in Toronto’s entertainment district.
She bought the one-bedroom condo with her husband in March 2022 — the height of the market when prices were high and interest rates were ultralow.
Three years later, Toronto’s condo market is at a standstill. Investors, who own the majority of new units, have deserted the sector leaving behind a glut of inventory.
While she knew it might not be the best time to sell, she had to — Sivitskaya and her husband were moving into a preconstruction townhome further out in the GTA in early 2025. They had 20 showings, but in the end they had to sell for significantly less than they paid.
“We got destroyed,” she said.
“Now, people ask you ‘why did you buy at the height of the pandemic?’ It’s easy to say that in hindsight, but we were just following the advice at the time.”
The hot spring market that experts forecasted months ago hasn’t materialized.
Thousands of condo sellers in Toronto are struggling to sell their units, competing with countless others. The condo market has been struggling for the last year and is continuing to drag down average sales volumes in the city. GTA home sales were the lowest for the month of March in at least the last 23 years, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board’s (TRREB). Annual sales plummeted for all housing types with detached home sales leading the way at 25 per cent.
With an already weak condo market, the current uncertainty with U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war and the upcoming federal election in Canada has buyers in a wait-and-see approach. As a result condo prices are finally starting to fall in line with pre-pandemic levels, experts say.
However, move-in ready semi-detached homes listed below $1.5 million in desirable neighbourhoods are attracting buyers, experts add, as there’s high demand and limited supply in this segment of the market.
“We can’t point to Trump’s tariffs as to why condo sales are slow,” said Tom Storey, sales representative with Royal LePage Signature Realty.
“That segment has so many investors involved who couldn’t make the math work as price appreciation and rent has declined. Almost 70 per cent of active listings in the City of Toronto are condos. We won’t see any price increases in any segment of the market this year, but semi-detached homes will continue to be the most active.”
Condo prices finally drop
In March, condo prices in the GTA dropped 2.6 per cent year over year. The average price for a condo is now $680,000 compared to $700,000 this time last year.
“The condo market is finally seeing price drops that people were waiting for,” Storey said. “It’s nothing major, but right now sellers are more understanding that in order to stand out you need to have a good product and price.”
Units that have two bedrooms and two bathrooms continue to perform, Storey said, adding he sold some units recently that were on the market for less than two weeks.
The smaller one-bedroom units are struggling to sell, holding back condo owners who wish to move-up and purchase a townhome or semi-detached property.
“The condo market is ice cold,” said Jarrod Armstrong, a sales representative at Armstrong Team. “But prices are starting to be similar to what we saw pre-pandemic.” In March 2019, average condo prices were $560,000 — more studio units are cropping up in the city at that price, he added.
It’s unlikely that the condo market will bounce back in at least the next year, experts said.
Still selling: semis in the sweet spot
Semi-detached properties for entry-level buyers is one segment of the market that is showing signs of life, experts say.
If the home is move-in ready, in the right school district and desirable neighbourhood — such as Riverdale, the Beach, and in the west end — it’s attracting offers, Armstrong said.
And the new mortgage rules allowing buyers to put down less than 20 per cent on a home up to $1.5 million is making these semi-detached properties even more attractive, he added.
However, any single-family home that’s $1 million or below is a “major fixer upper” and not many builders or contractors are taking on renovation projects at this time, Armstrong said.
Properties above $2 million are also struggling to sell as buyers don’t want to take on significant debt at this time.
In March, detached home prices dropped 1.8 per cent year over year to $1.4 million on average, and sales plummeted by 25 per cent. Semi-detached properties saw the lowest sales decline out of all property types at 16 per cent, and prices dropped marginally at 0.9 per cent year over year, to an average of $1.1 million, according to TRREB.
Tariffs hurt consumer confidence
While Trump’s tariffs aren’t the main cause for Toronto’s sluggish spring market, it isn’t helping buyers’ confidence.
“It’s this self-fulfilling prophecy of negativity,” Armstrong said. “The emails we receive from clients now are just asking about how tariffs will impact them.”
The Bank of Canada’s 0.25 percentage point interest rate cut in March did little to spur the market, and if they cut again in April, Armstrong doesn’t think it will have any impact on market activity.
The real estate market behaves like any financial market, reacting poorly to uncertainty, said Cameron Forbes, Re/Max Realtron Realty broker.
Experts said the rest of the spring market will fall in line with sales and price activity recorded in March. There will need to be a period of economic certainty to bring buyers back.
“For most people in Toronto they won’t be impacted by tariffs,” Forbes said. “But buyers enter this herd mentality where they think it’s better not to do anything and wait.”
