By 2029, Toronto could have virtually no new condos being completed.
This outlook comes straight from condo research firm Urbanation, and it tells you a lot about what is happening in the GTA’s new housing market.
New condominium apartment sales in the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area fell again in 2025. Sales dropped 60% from the year before, to just 1,599 units. That is the lowest annual result since 1991.
When condo sales collapse like this, construction inevitably follows.
Housing starts in the GTA have already fallen sharply, to roughly 26,000 units in 2025. And housing downturns do not stay contained within construction. They spread through suppliers, trades, and the broader economy.
But what we are seeing today goes beyond a typical cyclical slowdown.
What we are seeing is the breakdown of Toronto’s pre-construction condo model.
In Canada, new condo construction depends heavily on pre-sales, which means supply has become reliant on investors. These units were not primarily built for end-users. They were built for investors expecting rising prices, low borrowing costs, and easy returns.
That model stops working when rates rise and prices fall. Investor demand disappears, and the pre-construction system stops functioning the way it used to.
This is one of the reasons I have been a vocal critic of Toronto’s obsession with investors funding new housing supply.
When your housing system depends on investor demand, it does not just increase building during the boom. It also makes the cycle more unstable. Prices overshoot as more investors pile in, and the boom becomes larger than it should be.
And when the market turns, the crash is larger too. Projects get cancelled, sales vanish, and housing starts fall much more sharply than they otherwise would.
Toronto’s condo downturn is more severe than in most other markets because our boom was more extreme. These are predictable outcomes when new housing is fueled by speculative buying.
Canada has an opportunity to make structural changes to how new homes are built. We could move toward a model where housing supply is driven less by speculative investor demand and more by the needs of Canadian households.
But so far, I have seen very little interest in building a more sustainable system. Instead, the conversation keeps drifting back to the speculative playbook of the past. Cut taxes for investors. Open the market to foreign capital. Expand short-term rental conversions.
Repeating the mistakes of the last decade will not produce different results.
John Pasalis is President of Realosophy Realty. A specialist in real estate data analysis, John’s research focuses on unlocking micro trends in the Greater Toronto Area real estate market. His research has been utilized by the Bank of Canada, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Have questions about your own moves in the Toronto area as a buyer, seller, investor or renter? Book a no-obligation consult with John and his team at a Realosophy here: https://www.movesmartly.com/meetjohn
John Pasalis
John Pasalis is President of Realosophy Realty, a Toronto real estate brokerage which uses data analysis to advise residential real estate buyers, sellers and investors. A specialist in real estate data analysis, John's research focuses on unlocking micro trends in the Greater Toronto Area real estate market. His research has been shared with the IMF and cited by the Bank of Canada and CMHC. A frequent commentator on the Toronto housing market and real estate consumer and industry issues, John has contributed to the Globe and Mail, CBC, BNN Bloomberg, TVO's The Agenda, Toronto Star and other media, national and international government and industry organizations. John holds a B.Sc. in Economics from the University of Toronto and is a candidate in the Doctorate of Business Administration Program at the University of Toronto and Henley Business School (UK).
