The question I get asked most often right now is some version of “did I miss it?” Prices have come down a long way, the headlines have moved from panic to talk of a turning point, and buyers who spent two years waiting are suddenly worried they waited too long.

It is a fair thing to worry about. It is also, I think, the wrong question, and this month’s numbers show why.

What the data actually showed

Prices came down again, and sales went up. In June 2026 the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board reported the average GTA condo apartment sold for $630,688, down 9.4 per cent from a year earlier, the steepest annual decline of any housing type. In the same month, condo sales rose 14.3 per cent year-over-year. More people bought, and they paid less. Across all housing types, GTA sales were up 9.4 per cent while new listings fell 12.9 per cent.

Borrowing costs held steady. On July 15, 2026, the Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25 per cent for a sixth consecutive decision. The next scheduled announcement is September 2. Whatever else is moving, the rate picture has been still for most of a year.

And the number of resale condos for sale dropped sharply. This is the part that gets far less coverage, and it is the reason the market feels contradictory. Urbanation reported that active resale condo listings across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area fell 21 per cent year-over-year in the second quarter, to 7,105 units, the lowest level in three years and the largest annual decline in four and a half years.

Why “there is tons of choice out there” is now out of date

If you have been told this is a market swimming in options, that was true earlier this year and it is a lagging description now, at least for resale.

Here is the arithmetic that explains the confusion. Total standing condo inventory across the region was about 12,106 units at the end of the second quarter, roughly one per cent higher than a year earlier. That sounds like nothing changed. But that total is two very different pools added together:

  • Resale listings: 7,105, down 21 per cent. These are completed condos being sold by their owners. This is the market I work in.
  • Unsold completed units held by developers: 5,001, up 68 per cent, a record. These are finished new-build units that have not sold.

One pool shrank by a fifth. The other grew by two thirds. Added together they cancel out, so the headline inventory number reads as stable. For a buyer looking at resale listings, it is not stable at all.

I want to be careful not to overstate this. Even after a 21 per cent drop, resale listings are still well above their ten-year average. This is not a scarce market and there is no reason to rush. But the specific claim that resale buyers have endless choice, which was accurate six months ago, no longer matches what is on the board.

The stories that are frightening people are mostly not about resale

Much of the alarming condo coverage this year describes people who bought pre-construction at 2021 and 2022 prices, cannot close because the finished unit appraises far below their contract price, and cannot assign their way out. Those losses are real and I have a great deal of sympathy for the people in them.

They are also a different market. I work in resale, not new construction, and part of the reason is exactly this: with a resale condo you can see what you are buying. The building exists. It has a track record, a reserve fund with a history, a board that has made real decisions, and neighbours you can talk to. You are not buying a rendering and a completion date three years out.

So when you read that Toronto condos are unsellable, check which market the story is about before you let it change your plans.

What we are doing ourselves

I will tell you where my own family sits, because I think you are entitled to know whether I take my own advice.

My husband and I are helping our daughter shop for a resale condo. We have been looking for months. We have not bought, and we are still waiting.

I am not going to dress that up as a market call. We do not know when the bottom is. Nobody does, including the people who say they do. What I can tell you is what the published forecasts say, so you can weigh them yourself. TD Economics, in a report dated May 2026, expects GTA resale condo prices to keep falling this year, with the decline slowing in 2027 and a sustained uptrend only in 2028. The Bank of Canada, in its July 2026 Monetary Policy Report, noted that residential investment is restrained in part by “a large stock of unsold small condominiums in Toronto and Vancouver,” and that the overhang of unsold condominiums could mean the recovery in housing activity is slower than expected.

That is the central bank and a major forecaster saying, in their own words, that this is likely to take a while. We are not in a hurry, our daughter is not in a hurry, and nothing about our life falls apart if we buy next spring instead of this month. So we read that, looked at our own situation, and decided we are comfortable being patient.

Which means the real question is not “did I miss it”

If you can rent comfortably, you are not under pressure, and no unit has genuinely excited you, waiting is a perfectly defensible decision and you are in good company. Waiting because nothing is forcing your hand is a decision, not a delay.

If you need to move, or you have found a unit in a well-run building that suits your life for the next five or ten years, then whatever prices do next matters much less than people think. You are buying a home to live in, not a position to trade. The month you bought will matter far less than the building you bought into.

And that is the part worth spending your energy on. Two condos at the same price can be a sound long-term home or a slow and expensive problem, and the difference is in the building’s finances, its repair history, how it is run, and what the documents actually say. If you want to know what to look at before you fall in love with a floor plan, I wrote a guide to what makes a condo a safe one.

Timing the bottom is a guess. Choosing the right building is a decision you can actually make well, whether you buy this month or next year.