Good morning from Hamilton. 🍁

This morning, TRREB released April's housing numbers for the Greater Toronto Area.

The headline looks encouraging. GTA home sales rose by the most in nine months in April, with seasonally adjusted sales climbing 6.1% from March to 4,829 units — the second straight month of gains and the largest since July last year.

Spring is here. Buyers are returning. The freeze is thawing.

Except — look one layer deeper and a completely different story is sitting underneath that headline.

Toronto's condo market is in its worst shape in over three decades. And April's sales bump hasn't changed that. Not even close.

Let's get into it.

1,599

New condo units sold across the entire GTA in 2025.

The full year. All twelve months. One city. 1,599 units.

That is a 60% drop from 2024 figures — which were already struggling — and the lowest number since 1991. To put it another way: Toronto's condo market just posted its worst sales year since the recession that followed the last major housing crash.

And 2026 is tracking even worse. Just 246 new condos were sold across the GTA in Q1 2026 — down 52% from a year earlier and 94% below the 10-year average for the period.

That is not a soft market. That is a market that has essentially stopped functioning.

Condo apartments in the GTA averaged $620,479 in March 2026 — down 9.0% year-over-year and still sliding month-over-month. The condo segment continues to bear the brunt of the slowdown, with buyers returning only at lower price points or with greater negotiating leverage.

For context: the average GTA condo peaked at nearly $800,000 in early 2022. That's a $180,000 decline in four years — and most analysts say the bottom isn't in yet.

HOW A MARKET BUILT ON INVESTORS FALLS APART WITHOUT THEM

To understand what's happening to Toronto condos, you need to understand what built them in the first place.

For decades, the math worked like this: investors bought pre-construction units years before completion, paying a deposit of roughly 20%. During the construction period — typically three to five years — prices rose steadily. By closing, the unit was worth more than the purchase price. The investor sold or rented it at a profit. Developers used those presale contracts to unlock construction financing. Banks required roughly 70% of units to be presold before releasing funds.

Between 2015 and 2022, condo investors benefited from low interest rates and strong price increases — more than 40% on average — between when they purchased the unit in presale and when construction ended.

Then rates doubled. And the entire model broke.

CIBC and Urbanation research found that 77% of Toronto investors with new condo mortgages are losing money on a cash-flow basis, with average negative cash flows of $597 per month. Investors who once fuelled the pre-construction market have essentially disappeared. And without investor presales, developers can't unlock construction financing. Without construction financing, new towers don't get built.

Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC, has effectively declared the condo market to be in a recession — characterizing the current climate as a necessary shock to the system.

The pre-construction trap

The cruelest part of this cycle is playing out right now for thousands of Canadians who bought pre-construction units at 2021–2022 prices.

2026 is expected to be the biggest and most problematic year, with an estimated 28,000 units completing — and a widening gap between purchase prices and current market values.

Consider an investor who put down a $200,000 deposit to buy a presale unit valued at $1 million in 2022. Three years later, the prevailing market price has dropped to about $700,000. Despite this decline, the investor still legally owes the builder $1 million, as per the initial contract. An investor choosing to sell would then lose about $300,000 — the initial deposit and then some.

An additional roughly 3,000 units — approximately 10% of pre-sold condos registered in 2025 — were taken back by developers after purchasers failed to close. These are not investors walking away from a bad trade. These are people who literally could not get a mortgage because the appraised value came in below the purchase price they agreed to years ago.

The gap nobody is talking about

Resale condo units are averaging $859 per square foot in Q1 2026 — a 25% decline from the market peak in early 2022. But developers are still asking an average of $1,189 per square foot for new standing inventory — a record 38% premium over comparable resale units.

Why would any buyer pay 38% more for a new unit when an identical resale exists for less? The answer is: they won't. And that pricing gap is precisely why no new condo projects launched in Q1 2026.

"No builder is going to jump into the game and launch a brand new project" at current conditions, according to one pre-construction specialist who has shifted his business from 95% pre-construction to almost entirely resale and rental transactions.

In Toronto, 55% of pre-construction units went unsold in Q1 2025 — marginally below the record high of 56% at the end of 2024. This level of unsold units presents a significant challenge for developers, as lenders typically require a pre-sale threshold of 70% prior to releasing construction funds.

When more than half your inventory sits unsold and you need 70% sold just to start building — you don't start building.

April's headline is real — but narrow. GTA home sales rose 7% year-over-year in April, led by a 9.2% increase in detached home sales and a 9.1% increase in condo sales. That's genuine improvement. But it's coming off an extraordinarily low base. April 2026 was still one of the worst Aprils on record despite the sales increase. Improvement from terrible is still bad.

Prices edged up — but don't call it a recovery. The MLS HPI Composite benchmark was flat month-over-month after seasonal adjustment at C$929,300 in April — ending a streak of 10 straight monthly declines. The average selling price of $1,051,969 was down 4.9% year-over-year. Prices stopped falling for one month. That is not the same as prices recovering.

The supply side is tightening — which matters more. New listings in the GTA fell 9.3% year-over-year to 17,097 in April, while sales rose. That tightening of the sales-to-listings ratio suggests market conditions are beginning to shift in some neighbourhoods. This is actually the more meaningful signal: when sellers retreat and buyers return simultaneously, inventory falls — which is what eventually stabilizes prices.

The future shortage is being built right now. Full-year condo completions are projected to fall to 21,850 units in 2026, down from nearly 30,000 units in each of the previous two years, with further declines expected through 2028. Every month that no new projects launch is a month subtracted from supply three to five years from now. The crash of 2025–2026 is quietly engineering the shortage of 2028–2030.

Renters are getting hit too. The dynamic driving this: weak ownership market conditions are pushing more condo owners to list their units for rent rather than sell at a loss — flooding the rental market with additional supply and putting further downward pressure on rents. Average condo apartment rents are down approximately 5.7% nationally as of January 2026, with Toronto one-bedroom rents falling to $1,993/month. Lower rents sound good for tenants — but they're destroying the investor math that funds new construction, making the future shortage worse.

→ If you're a first-time buyer looking at condos in Toronto: the leverage is genuinely yours right now. With 4,912 active listings against just 951 sales in the condo segment, buyers remain firmly in control — but with supply tightening, that window may not stay open indefinitely. If you're buying to live in it for five-plus years, the data supports acting. If you're buying to flip — the data doesn't.

→ If you bought a pre-construction condo in 2021 or 2022 and are closing soon: get an independent appraisal before closing. If the appraised value comes in below your purchase price, your lender will not cover the gap. You will need to bring additional cash to close or renegotiate with the developer. Talk to a real estate lawyer before your closing date arrives.

→ If you own a condo and are considering selling: analysts tracking Toronto's correction note that the 1990s downturn saw prices fall 28.5% before bottoming — and prices didn't return to their 1989 levels until 2011. Waiting for a full recovery to 2022 prices may mean waiting until 2029 or later. If your situation requires a decision, price it for today's market, not yesterday's.

→ If you're an investor holding a condo with negative cash flow: the investors surviving this cycle are those with low leverage, long time horizons, or the ability to absorb short-term losses. A meaningful recovery in investor returns is more likely a 2028 or later story. Model your cash position against that timeline honestly.

→ If you're watching this from outside Toronto: the condo crash is primarily a GTA and Vancouver story. If you're in Montreal, Calgary, or the Prairies, your condo market is experiencing a different — and considerably softer — correction. The national headline numbers mask enormous regional divergence, which eight issues of Maple Metric data have now consistently confirmed.

This morning's TRREB numbers will be reported as a green shoot. Sales up. Prices stabilized. Spring has arrived.

And in a narrow sense, that's true. The detached and semi-detached segments are showing real, if modest, improvement. Buyers who have been frozen since 2022 are starting to move.

But underneath that headline, Toronto's condo market is carrying damage that one good spring cannot fix.

A 35-year sales low. A 94% collapse in new pre-construction activity. Investors bleeding $597 a month. Twenty-eight thousand units completing this year into a market where buyers won't pay the price the contract requires. And a construction pipeline so hollow that the shortage arriving at the end of this decade is already mathematically locked in.

The condo market isn't recovering. It's stabilizing at the bottom of a very deep hole — while simultaneously digging a new hole for 2028.

That's not a headline. But it's where the data goes when you follow it far enough.

Eight issues in. The story keeps getting more connected.

See you next Tuesday. 🍁

Six datasets powered this week's analysis. All public. All free.

Toronto Regional Real Estate Board — Market Watch April 2026. → www.trreb.ca

Urbanation — Q1 2026 Condo Market Report. → www.urbanation.ca

CMHC — Condominium Apartment Market Risks in Toronto and Vancouver, 2025. → www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca

Bank of Canada — What's Behind the Slowdown in Toronto's Condo Market, February 2026. → www.bankofcanada.ca

RBC Economics — Navigating Toronto's Frozen Pre-Construction Condo Market. → www.rbc.com/economics

Deeded — Toronto Condo Market January 2026 Update. → www.deeded.ca

This analysis examines Toronto's condo market collapse through three lenses: new pre-construction sales data, investor cash-flow dynamics, and the supply pipeline implications for 2028–2030. New condo sales and completion data from Urbanation Q1 2026 report. Resale pricing from TRREB Market Watch (March and April 2026). Investor cash-flow figures from CIBC and Urbanation joint research. Pre-construction appraisal shortfall data from CBC News and CMHC (2025–2026). Developer pricing vs. resale gap from Real Estate Magazine (April 2026). All figures in CAD.

The Maple Metric publishes data analysis for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this newsletter constitutes financial, mortgage, or real estate advice. All data is sourced from TRREB, Urbanation, CMHC, Bank of Canada, and RBC Economics — publicly available datasets.

Always consult a licensed financial advisor or real estate lawyer before making housing or investment decisions. This newsletter is independently operated and not affiliated with any financial institution.

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Published every Tuesday | Issue 8 | May 2026 Written and analyzed by Ish Sharma Ontario, Canada

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