KOMPASS REALTY GROUP

Weekly GTA Housing Market Brief

Sales Are Back. Prices Aren't.
And the 905 Is Bleeding Harder Than the 416.

Sunday, May 10, 2026  ·  Peter Kiriazopoulos, Kompass Realty Group

Welcome back. The spring market just put up its first set of numbers that actually feel like spring. TRREB dropped April stats on Tuesday and the headline read like a recovery — GTA sales up 7% year-over-year, new listings down 9%, the first back-to-back monthly sales gain in close to a year. Then you read the second line: average price still down 4.9%, the benchmark down 6.6%.

So which is it — green shoots or a head fake? Both, actually. Volume is climbing, prices aren't, and the recovery is uneven across the map. Toronto's 416 core is holding pricing while the 905 — including most of York Region — is doing the heavy lifting on the price correction. Add in the June 10 Bank of Canada decision creeping closer with inflation pushing 3%, and a CBC piece this weekend asking whether the GTA condo bottom is finally in, and you have a market that's moving but not in a straight line. Let's get into it.

1. The Market Has a Pulse, Just Not a Price Floor

The headline numbers: 5,946 GTA sales in April, +7% YoY. New listings 17,097, −9.3%. Second straight month of YoY sales gains, and on a seasonally-adjusted basis sales were up 6.1% from March. Active inventory came in at 25,110 units — still historically elevated, but down 6.4% from a year ago.

Now the part nobody is putting on the cover: average price $1,051,969, −4.9% YoY. MLS HPI composite −6.6% YoY. Sale-to-list ratio at 98%. Days on market: 29 listing days, 43 property days. Buyers are still negotiating, sellers are still discounting, and the homes that are actually trading hands are the ones where the price already came down to meet the market.

Here's the way I'd read it: in a soft market, rising sales are often the result of falling prices, not a leading indicator of a recovery. Buyers across Toronto, Scarborough, Markham, and the rest of the GTA aren't suddenly bullish — they're just less frozen. After 12+ months on the sidelines, decision fatigue is doing the work; sellers who reset their pricing are getting offers, and that's what shows up in the sales column.

This is the early shape of a more balanced market, not a flipped one. If sales keep grinding higher while new listings keep falling, you can sketch a path back to balance on a chart — but realistically that's a 2027 story, not a 2026 one. The set-up is improving. The cycle isn't done.

2. The Condo Question: Bottom, or Just Bouncing?

The story everyone clicked on this week was CBC's piece on whether the Toronto condo market has finally hit its bottom — published Friday, May 9. Inside the city, 1,054 condo apartments sold in April, up 14.4% YoY. Average condo price $665,000, down 6.4% YoY. Same dynamic as the broader GTA market, just more extreme: volume up, price still slipping.

The bull case is real. With variable mortgage rates at 3.35% and Toronto condo prices roughly 24% below their 2022 peak, the math finally works for end-users in a way it hasn't in three years. First-time buyers, downsizers from Markham and Scarborough, and people who got priced out of the freehold market are starting to write offers again. TRREB is calling out exactly this: sidelined buyers stepping back in because financing and prices have finally lined up.

The bear case is also real. A record 4,295 unsold finished new-condo units sat on the books across the GTA as of Q1 — roughly double last year's number. New-condo asking prices still average $1,189/sqft versus $859/sqft on the resale side, a 38% gap that tells you the developer side of the market is nowhere near cleared. And the rental backdrop hasn't improved either: Q1 GTHA rental vacancy hit 5.4%, with 47% of buildings offering two months free rent. Investor cash flow on most new condo units is broken, full stop.

My read: end-user condo buyers in downtown Toronto, Scarborough, and Markham are getting the best entry point in years. Investor-grade condo demand isn't coming back until rents stabilize, and rents aren't stabilizing until that mountain of new inventory absorbs. Same building, two different markets.

3. Mortgage Rates Are Splitting, and June 10 Is the Next Test

Quick rate snapshot as of this weekend: best 5-year fixed at the broker level around 3.94% (a few brokers at 3.90%), best 5-year variable around 3.35%. Prime sits at 4.45%. That's a tighter fixed/variable spread than we've seen all year — roughly 59 bps — and fixed rates have been creeping up since the BoC's April 29 hold, not down.

Why? Bonds. The 5-year Government of Canada bond is staying sticky because inflation is moving in the wrong direction. Canada's headline CPI hit 2.4% in March and the BoC's own Monetary Policy Report sees April CPI pushing roughly 3% on energy. Macklem flagged in April that the Bank could move in either direction from here — and OIS markets are now pricing a 5% chance of a hike at the June 10 meeting, climbing toward 23% by July 15. Small odds, but no longer zero.

Translation for buyers shopping mortgages across Toronto, Scarborough, Markham, and the rest of the GTA: the variable side is being priced like the BoC is done cutting; the fixed side is being priced like there's a non-trivial chance of a hike. If you're renewing in the next six months, shop your options now — your incumbent lender's renewal offer is almost never their best rate. If you're new-money buying, the variable bet finally has a credible "the cuts are over" risk attached to it; lock-in math is back on the table for the first time in 18 months.

4. The 905 Got Squeezed Harder Than the 416 — Including Right Here

The most important data point inside the TRREB release got almost no airtime: semi-detached prices in the 905 fell 10.1% YoY versus a 1.5% increase in the 416 — the sharpest divergence across every property type. Detached followed the same pattern, just less dramatically. The 905 suburbs are absorbing the GTA's price correction. The Toronto core isn't.

What that looks like on the ground in York Region: Markham average $1,166,392 with median days on market at 24. Newmarket average $1,024,709, median DOM 25. Stouffville detached homes running around $1.42M — that segment held up better than most of the 905 last cycle, but the broader York Region freehold pattern is unmistakable. Buyers can transact at materially better pricing in Markham, Stouffville, Newmarket, Richmond Hill, and Aurora today than they could a year ago. RE/MAX's 2026 York Region outlook still calls it a buyer's market trending toward balance, and April's data didn't change that classification. Meanwhile, downtown Toronto and parts of Scarborough are holding pricing on freeholds where supply is genuinely tight.

The structural piece that won't go away: single-detached supply across York Region is still thin. Family-formation demand from buyers priced out of Toronto proper has kept this segment structurally above supply all decade. So even as the 905 absorbs the price correction in the short run, the medium-term setup for well-priced detached homes between Markham and Stouffville is constructive — if the BoC doesn't blow up the variable mortgage with a surprise hike.

Peter's Take

If you're buying

This is the spring window you've been waiting for, but it's a window — not a wide-open door. Sales are climbing, which means competition is creeping back, especially on freeholds in the 416 and on resale condos across Toronto and Scarborough. In York Region — Markham, Stouffville, Newmarket, Richmond Hill — you still have meaningful leverage on freeholds. Get pre-approved this week at both fixed and variable; the spread is tight enough that the lock-in math finally cuts both ways.

If you're selling

Tighter supply is helping you, but the price you need to hit to actually move is still 4–7% below last April. Don't anchor on 2022. Anchor on what just sold on your street in the last 30 days. The homes that are selling — in Markham, in Stouffville, in Scarborough, in downtown Toronto — are the ones priced where buyers think they should be, not where sellers think they should be. Get that read right and you can move quickly.

If you're investing

End-user condo entry pricing is the best it's been in three-plus years, but new-condo pre-construction is still broken and rental cash flow is still negative on most new builds across the GTA. If you're holding, hold for rent stabilization and the 2027–2028 mortgage renewal wave to clear. If you're buying, buy resale, buy for end-use or long-hold cash flow, and don't pay assignment markups.

The bottom line this week is what my last few showings have been telling me: buyers are picking up the phone again. But they're picking it up with a price in their head, and that price isn't the seller's number. The GTA market is moving — just slowly, and from the bottom up.

— Peter

Sources

•  TRREB Market Watch — GTA April 2026 Stats — https://trreb.ca/market-data/market-watch/

•  Daniel Foch — “GTA sales up in April, but prices tell a different story”, May 5, 2026 — https://realestatemagazine.ca/foch-gta-sales-up-in-april-but-prices-tell-a-different-story/

•  John Pasalis — “Toronto's Housing Market in April: Still Stuck, But Are Green Shoots Emerging?”, May 5, 2026 — https://www.movesmartly.com/articles/torontos-housing-market-in-april-still-stuck-but-are-green-shoots-emerging

•  CBC News — “Has Toronto's condo market hit its bottom?”, May 9, 2026 — https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/toronto-condo-market-bottom-9.7192760

•  Storeys — “GTA Home Sales Rose, New Listings Shrunk in April” — https://storeys.com/gta-trreb-april-2026/

•  Urbanation — Standing Condo Inventory Hits Record High in Q1 — https://www.urbanation.ca/news/standing-condo-inventory-hits-record-high-q1

•  Bank of Canada — Rate decision and MPR, April 29, 2026 — https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2026/04/fad-press-release-2026-04-29/

•  True North Mortgage — Mortgage Rate Forecast (BoC pricing) — https://www.truenorthmortgage.ca/blog/mortgage-rate-forecast

•  WOWA — Toronto Housing Market Update, May 5, 2026 — https://wowa.ca/toronto-housing-market

•  Zolo — Markham & Newmarket Market Reports, April 2026 — https://www.zolo.ca/markham-real-estate/trends

•  RE/MAX — York Region Housing Market Outlook 2026 — https://blog.remax.ca/york-region-housing-market-outlook/

Peter Kiriazopoulos*, Sales Representative   ·   Kompass Realty Group

RE/MAX Ultimate Realty Inc., Brokerage — Independently Owned and Operated

1739 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, ON   ·   416-721-2298   ·   [email protected]   ·   kompassrealtygroup.ca

*Personal Real Estate Corporation. Not intended to solicit buyers or sellers currently under contract.