Toronto condo prices are down, and if you own one, you've felt it. The number on your unit right now is lower than it was in 2024. That's the honest truth, and I'm not going to dress it up.
What I am going to do is tell you why that fact is more interesting than it first appears, especially if you've been thinking about moving out of your condo and into something larger. Because the way most people are reading "condo prices are down" is leading them to exactly the wrong conclusion.
The wrong conclusion is: this is a bad time to sell.
The more accurate version is: this is a complicated time to sell, and whether it's good or bad depends entirely on what you're selling into.
The number that gets ignored
When people hear that Toronto condo prices 2026 are down — and they are, meaningfully, the MLS HPI is down 7.4% year over year as of March, they process that as a loss. And in isolation, it is. Your condo is worth less today than it was eighteen months ago.
But condo owners who are thinking about moving up aren't selling into cash. They're selling into another purchase. And that other purchase (the semi-detached in Roncesvalles, the freehold in East York, the larger condo in a different building) has also dropped.
Here's the thing about percentage declines across a price range: they're symmetric by percentage but not by dollar. A 7% decline on a $700,000 condo is about $49,000. A 7% decline on a $1.4 million freehold is about $98,000. You're giving up $49,000 on the sale. You're saving $98,000 on the purchase. The net — before you get into any other details — is $49,000 in your favour compared to where things stood when prices were higher.
That math works every time you're moving from a lower price point to a higher one. It's not specific to this moment. But this moment is when the spreads are actually large enough to matter.
Being honest about what you're still giving up
I want to be clear about something before going further, because I think it's important to say directly: you are still taking a hit on the condo.
Selling a property for less than its peak value is a real loss. It doesn't matter that the loss is offset on the purchase side — psychologically, practically, it's a loss. If you bought your condo at or near the peak and you're selling now, you may be selling below what you paid, or close to it.
The point I'm making isn't that the move is painless. It's that the calculation shouldn't stop at "my condo is worth less." It should go all the way through the transaction — both sides — before you decide what the moment means for you.
A lot of people are stopping at step one. They're looking at their property value, feeling the compression, and deciding to wait for the market to recover before they sell. But what they're actually waiting for is for their condo to go back up — and they're not accounting for the fact that the freehold they want will also go back up, probably faster, because the segments are at different points in their recovery cycle and because larger, freehold properties tend to recover first when conditions tighten.
So waiting for the condo to recover might mean buying into a market where the purchase price has moved more significantly than the sale price has. You could wait and end up in a worse net position.
What the supply picture does to this calculation
There's another layer to this, and it connects directly to the March 2026 TRREB data.
New listings in the GTA came in at 14,442 in March — down 16.7% from the same month last year. That's a big drop. And TRREB has flagged that the broader housing supply pipeline in the GTA is at risk of running short over a medium-to-long-term horizon. The development pipeline hasn't kept pace with what population growth and household formation are going to require.
What that means in practical terms: the conditions that are compressing prices right now — specifically the elevated inventory from 2023 and 2024 that kept sellers competing against each other — are already reversing. Listings are falling. If that continues, the negotiating room buyers currently have will shrink. The price compression that makes the move-up math work well right now may not be available in twelve or eighteen months.
None of that is a reason to panic. It is a reason to run the numbers now rather than assuming the window stays open indefinitely.
The segment question
Not all condos are in the same position, and this makes a difference for the math.
A one-bedroom in a newer highrise in the downtown core has a different market than a two-bedroom in a boutique building in the Annex or a townhouse condo in Leslieville. The former has seen more downward pressure, partly because investor-owned units and short-term rental conversions have added supply to that segment specifically. The latter — larger units, better locations, lower building density — has held up better.
If your condo is in the segment with more pressure, the hit on the sale side is probably more pronounced. It changes the spread calculation. It doesn't necessarily change the conclusion, but it changes the numbers.
The same applies on the purchase side. A semi in a stable east-end pocket is in a different spot than a detached in the outer west. Understanding which segment you're buying into — and where it is in the cycle right now — is part of doing this analysis properly.
The right question to be asking
Most people in this situation are asking: is the Toronto condo market going to recover?
That's not the wrong question. But it's not the most useful one. The more useful question is: compared to what I'm buying, how is my condo's price holding up — and is that relationship likely to improve or worsen from here?
When you reframe it that way, the current market looks different. Sales-to-list ratios are improving. Listing volumes are contracting. The conditions that drive price recovery are assembling themselves. But prices are still down, which means if you make the move now, you're doing it with the benefit of compressed prices on both sides — and the larger benefit lands on the purchase side.
That's the window. It may not be a short window. But it's not permanent either.
You can book a strategy call with me directly at https://meetings-na3.hubspot.com/jeremy-van-caulart — it's a real conversation about your situation, not a sales call.
