In Toronto, what a house sold for is not published anywhere you can look up for free. Sale prices live inside the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) MLS system and in provincial land registration records, so finding out what a house sold for means asking a registered real estate agent, signing up for a brokerage search site that is licensed to show sold data, or paying a small fee to the Ontario Land Registry.
REALTOR.ca, the public listing site run by the Canadian Real Estate Association, only displays homes that are currently for sale. The moment a property closes, its price vanishes from public view. That catches people off guard, particularly anyone who has browsed American listing portals, where sold prices sit right on the page.
Asking an agent is the fastest option. A TRREB member can pull the full transaction history on a property: what it was originally listed at, whether the price was cut, how many days it sat, and what it eventually sold for. Those records are the raw material behind a comparative market analysis, and they explain far more than a single sale price does on its own.
Brokerage websites are the second door. TRREB spent years restricting how its members could display sold data online, and the Competition Tribunal ordered it to stop. The Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear TRREB's appeal in August 2018, which is why Ontario brokerages can now publish sold prices on password-protected sites known as virtual office websites. You have to create an account to see the numbers, but the data comes from the board itself.
Every change of ownership in the province is registered, and the transfer document states the consideration paid, which is the figure Ontario Land Transfer Tax is calculated on. Anyone can search these records at OnLand.ca, the online land registry operated by Teranet. A parcel register runs $36.50 for the first page, and copies of individual registered documents cost $3.39 each. The tradeoff is that registry records appear only after closing, sometimes weeks later, and they tell you nothing about the asking price or how long the home was on the market.
One number people mistake for a sale price is the MPAC assessment on a property tax bill. It is a valuation for taxation purposes on a past valuation date, not evidence of what a home is actually worth today.
Related reading: What Is a Comparative Market Analysis in Toronto?, What Is the Difference Between Assessed Value and Market Value in Ontario?, and What Do Real Estate Listing Statuses Mean in Ontario?