Urbanation, the Toronto condominium research firm, released its third-quarter 2026 market survey on 19 October. It counted 760 new condominium apartment sales across the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA) in the quarter, double the figure a year earlier and the second quarterly rise in a row. Even so, sales were 78% below the 10-year average for third quarters. Of those 760 sales, 339 units went to investment groups in bulk transactions, which Urbanation puts at 45% of all new-condo sales.

The bulk deals explain where the activity sits. Sales in completed buildings reached a record 648 units, 85% of the total and also a record share. Pre-construction sales fell 61% from a year earlier to 60 units, the 12th consecutive quarter of annual decline. The recovery so far is therefore a clearance of finished stock rather than a return of buyers to projects still to be built.

That clearance has started to show in the inventory count. Completed and unsold units fell 7% from a record 5,485 in the second quarter to 5,127 in the third, the first quarterly decline in four years. The backlog remains large by recent standards. Urbanation says it is 40% higher than a year ago and four times the 1,279 units recorded two years ago.

The price data show where institutional money is prepared to buy. Bulk sales transacted at an average of C$763 per square foot, which Urbanation calculates as an average discount of 40% to the original selling prices in the same buildings. Developers were asking an average of C$1,157 per square foot for completed and unsold units, 4% lower than a year earlier and 20% below the peak of C$1,446 in the second quarter of 2023. New units sold outside bulk and luxury deals averaged C$1,045 per square foot. On Realtopedia's arithmetic, the bulk price was about 27% below that figure and about 34% below the average asking price.

The resale market gives a second reference point. Urbanation reports that resale condo prices across the GTHA averaged C$724 per square foot in the third quarter, down 5.7% from a year earlier and the smallest annual decline in six quarters. The bulk price was therefore about 5% above the average resale price, again on Realtopedia's arithmetic, while new units bought individually cost about 44% more per square foot than the resale average. Resale prices held up best in the former City of Toronto, at C$905 per square foot after a 2.8% annual fall, against declines of 7.9% in the outer 416 area and 9.3% in the 905 region.

The gap between C$763 and C$1,045 per square foot is the clearest sourced answer to whether an individual buyer can expect the same terms. The bulk figure is an average across portfolios of units sold together in completed buildings, while the individual figure is what single-unit buyers actually paid in the same quarter. Asked by the Financial Post whether individual buyers could negotiate the same discounts as groups buying dozens of units, John Pasalis, president of Realosophy Realty, said it was "probably unlikely". Shaun Hildebrand, president of Urbanation, told the paper that the bulk buyers are private real estate investment firms and funds acquiring completed condos to hold as long-term rentals.

The supply figures in the same survey explain why the standing stock matters to those buyers. Construction started on 381 units in a single project in the third quarter, bringing starts for the first three quarters of 2026 to 2,696 units, 82% below the 10-year average for the period. Units under construction fell 38% from a year earlier to 35,920, the lowest level since early 2012, and 7,685 of them remain unsold. Urbanation's schedule of completions falls from 29,077 units in 2025 to 20,868 in 2026, then to 15,825 in 2027, 12,065 in 2028 and 4,213 in 2029. Prices and figures in this piece are in Canadian dollars, so a buyer funding from abroad also carries the exchange rate between the agreed price and the day of payment.

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Sources

Sources read 21 October 2026.