Over 20,000 unsold condo units sit empty in Toronto
The Toronto condo market is on the brink of a historic collapse. More than 20,000 unsold condo units sit unoccupied in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area (GTHA). It’s a surprising reality as Canada finds itself in an unprecedented housing crisis, where homes are scarce and unaffordable for average working Canadians.
The unsold condo inventory includes 10,934 units in pre-construction phases, 11,073 units currently being built, and 1,911 unsold completed units.
“It’s a really phenomenal price mistake,” contended Ron Butler of Butler Mortgage in The Hub’s 2025 federal election coverage livestream. “We’re talking about 40 percent higher price, and yet they were sold. There was a basic belief that condo prices could go up forever, rents could go up forever…Now, all the chickens have come home to roost.”
While it may seem peculiar that there could be a glut of condos in the midst of a national housing crisis, it is happening.
“I hear this alot…‘There can’t be a housing crisis where people need to build more homes, and a crash in the price of condos.’ Yeah, there can be,” Butler explained on his YouTube channel.
Butler said the wrong type of homes—small condos—were listed at the wrong price for Canadian buyers, especially young people looking to buy their first home. Some of the condo units for sale in Toronto are about 550 square feet, are cheaply made, have poor layouts and are listed for over $760,000; small, subpar quality, and expensive.
Butler contends that people will not pay for housing when it is priced too highly, is of inadequate quality, and provides them with low value, even in a housing crisis. As such, units that are not bought sit vacant.
The quantity of unsold completed units has more than doubled compared to last year, marking the highest level of unsold completed units in Toronto since the first quarter of 1993. Experts at the real estate think tank Urbanation anticipate that the increase in completed and unsold inventory will persist in 2025, with an additional 2,411 unsold units expected to be finished by the close of 2025.
2024 Toronto condo sales down 128 percent from 10-year average
In 2024, the new condominium apartment market in the GTHA recorded 4,590 sales, marking a third straight year of decline. The GTHA witnessed a 64 percent decrease from 2023 and a 78 percent drop in comparison to the most recent 10-year average (20,835). Overall, 2024 was the slowest for new condo sales in the GTHA since 1996.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, total new condominium apartment sales reached 802 units, reflecting a 12 percent increase from the third quarter of 2024, but a 71 percent drop year-over-year, representing the lowest sales total for a fourth quarter in the GTHA since 1993.
During the fourth quarter of 2024, six projects consisting of 1,829 units were launched for presales, but only 10 percent of those units sold.
Prices slightly decrease, and are expected to crash
The average sold price of condos in the GTA in the fourth quarter of 2024 was just north of $689,000, a 1.6 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2023. In the City of Toronto proper, the average selling price slightly increased from 2023 to just over $717,000.
“We have a lot of supply on the resale market, but it’s supply that a lot of people just don’t want to buy at today’s prices,” said John Pasalis, a Toronto real estate broker, on the CBC’s Front Burner podcast. “Affordability is kind of the big factor. Interest rates have kind of made it more difficult to buy both houses and condominiums, and this is partly why we’re seeing this big, big increase in listings.”
Economists at TD now predict that by the end of 2025, condo prices in Toronto will have dropped 15 to 20 percent from their peak in the third quarter of 2023.
The Toronto condo market is nearly 75 percent investor-driven, according to TD. They contend that rents for units are falling as the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the GTA was down 5 percent year over year in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Developers are cancelling condo projects
According to mid-April data published in the Toronto Star, 28 projects totalling 5,734 units in the GTHA have been cancelled, put on hold, gone into receivership, or been converted to rentals.
Jonathan Zadegan of the Zadegan Group, a real estate firm located in North York, explained to the Toronto Star that declining prices and reduced profit margins prevent developers from securing necessary construction financing, typically requiring 70 percent of units to be sold. But, since these condos are not being sold at the same rate or profit margins, developers are sitting on them or cancelling the projects altogether.
Condo construction down 79 percent from last year and 88 percent from the decade average
In the GTHA, construction began on 497 condominium units in the first quarter of 2025, marking a 79 percent decline from the same time a year earlier, and an 88 percent drop compared to the 10-year average, reaching the lowest quarterly figure since 1996.
Although condo completions fell by 16 percent from last year’s peak to 9,495 units in the first quarter of 2025, they were still 67 percent above the 10-year average. As of the end of the first quarter of 2025, there were 69,042 condo units being built in the GTHA, representing a one-third reduction over the last two years.
Aiden Muscovitch is a student at the University of Toronto studying Ethics, Society and Law. He is The Hub's Assistant Editor. He…
