Should you sell your Toronto home now or wait?

You might be among many Toronto homeowners asking if they should sell now or wait until prices go up, so here’s what the latest GTA numbers show and a few things you should consider before you decide.

If you're shopping for a freehold home in Toronto right now, there aren't many great options. New listings were down 14.4% from last year in September, roughly 2,800 fewer homes coming to market across the GTA. The number of homes for sale at the end of the month was down 9.3% too.

The reason is simple. Most homeowners have decided now is not a good time to sell. But what would a "good time" actually look like?

When someone tells us they're holding out for prices to improve, we ask one question: How much do they need to go up? If you're waiting for a jump of 10% or more, you may be waiting a while. We don't see anything on the horizon pointing to prices rising quickly. They may dip a tiny bit more, but we think flat is the more likely story for some time.

When will Toronto home prices recover?

I get the impression from my conversations that many think prices could still jump 10% or more in a single year. I think that's because it happened a lot recently. Between 2016 and 2022, average prices rose more than 10% in three separate years: about 12.5% in 2017, 14% in 2020 and 18.5% in 2021. But it wasn't steady. The average fell 12.4% from April 2017 to April 2018, and over the whole stretch, growth worked out to roughly 8.5% a year.

Toronto prices tend to move in bursts, followed by long flat stretches. The closest comparison is the last big peak in 1989. Prices fell for about seven years, took another six to recover, and didn't pass the 1989 high until 2002. That's 13 years in total.

Today, the average price is about 25% below its February 2022 peak of $1,334,544. Getting back there from September's $1,006,409 means prices need to rise about 33%. Here's roughly how long that would take at different growth rates:

Annual price growth	Years to return to the February 2022 peak
3%	About 9.5
5%	About 6
7%	About 4

Even at 7% a year, the kind of growth people remember, that's about four years of waiting.

To be clear: Nobody can predict the future, and we're not trying to. Markets can surprise in either direction. These numbers are a reference point, not a forecast. TRREB also notes its market area has changed over the years, so long-term comparisons are approximate.

So the real question isn’t, “Is it a good time to sell?”, it’s, “Is the wait worth it?"

Downsizing in Toronto: what waiting could cost you

If you're the downsizer and want your money to work for you, here's one perspective. Say you sold an average-priced GTA home in January 2026 and put the money into the S&P 500, the index of the 500 largest U.S. companies. Here's how the two paths compare:

	January 2026	Today	Gain
Kept the home	$968,468	$1,006,409 (Sept average)	+$37,941 (+3.9%)
Sold and invested in the S&P 500	$968,468	About $1,114,300 (as of Oct 9)	About +$145,900 (+15.1%)

That's a difference of roughly $107,900 in about nine months. The S&P 500 figure assumes dividends were reinvested.

We're not telling you to sell your home and invest it in the S&P 500. We want to show that looking at the real estate market alone is a mistake. You have to look at what you plan on doing with the money and what the potential results of that would be in your specific scenario. Selling has real costs, stocks can fall as fast as they rise, and Canadians investing in U.S. markets are also exposed to the exchange rate. One good year doesn't predict the next. But it makes the big-picture point: holding and waiting isn't free. Your money could be working somewhere else, and you still don't know how long the wait will be.

Moving from a condo to a house: does waiting help?

Another example of a person who might be holding off is the move-up buyer. Here's something to consider: if you wait for your smaller home to go up in price, the bigger home you want will likely go up too, and the gap between them can get wider.

A common move-up buyer might be moving from a condo to a home right now. Here's how that looks using September's GTA average prices:

	Today	If both rise 10%
Average condo apartment	$605,257	About $665,800
Average semi-detached house	$1,015,202	About $1,116,700
The gap	About $409,900	About $450,900

In that scenario, waiting made the move about $41,000 more expensive. It's also worth considering that a buyer's market can give you more room to negotiate on the bigger purchase.

There's no right answer here. Whether to sell is truly a personal decision, not a market one.

What we can tell you

If you have a good house in a good Toronto neighbourhood, you will get a good price. Not peak-2022 good, because 2022 wasn't normal. But good, fair value, and likely a price in line with what we'll see for some time.

The takeaway

Learn what your home is worth in today's market, and see how that looks next to your goals. Are your price goals reasonable over the next few years? What impact does waiting have on your lifestyle? And how would your money be working for you otherwise? We're happy to sit down and walk through those numbers with you.