Greater Toronto home sales up 9.4% in June as board predicts price growth could come

Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) chief information officer Jason Mercer says buyers are looking to take advantage of lower prices.

TORONTO — The Greater Toronto Area continued to see higher home sales last month compared with a year ago even as new listings slowed, but some say it could still take a while before selling prices bottom out.

With 6,770 homes in the region changing hands in June, activity was up 9.4 per cent year-over-year, while sales also rose 1.4 per cent from May on a seasonally adjusted basis.

The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board said the average selling price decreased 3.9 per cent year-over-year to $1,058,658, and the composite benchmark price, meant to represent the typical home, was down 5.4 per cent.

TRREB president Daniel Steinfeld said there was a “marked improvement” in activity during the second quarter after a slow start to the year, as conditions continue to tighten.

“We expect accelerating transactions and more competition between buyers in the last six months of the year, helping to satisfy pent-up demand and ultimately resulting in renewed price growth,” said Steinfeld in a news release.

The spring and early summer have shown “very early signs of recovery,” said real estate agent Tom Storey, who pointed out that last year brought some of the lowest sales numbers the GTA has seen in decades.

“There’s early signs that there’s a little bit more confidence coming to the market,” said Storey, a sales representative at Royal LePage Signature Realty.

“More sales are happening even though there’s less listings coming to the market.”

There were 17,282 new listings on the market in June, down 12.9 per cent from last year.

Inventory fell 13.5 per cent as there were 27,329 total active listings in the GTA.

Storey said many sellers he’s spoken to recently have shied away after realizing they couldn’t get the price they’re intent on yet, as conditions continue to favour buyers.

“There’s lots of sellers that are not in ‘have-to-sell’ territory, they’re in, ‘I would sell if it made sense for me,”’ he said.

“A lot of them are going, ‘OK, I tested it. I don’t like what it’s giving me. I’m just going to take it off (the market) and rent it out.”’

He said those dynamics are keeping the market from bottoming out, even though overall demand has increased.

“We’re still a long way away from the general market seeing any price increases,” Storey said.

“We’ve now had four months in a row where sales are up and new listings down. If that continues for the rest of this year, the market will eventually bottom, but it has to continue ... for like a year to a year-and-a-half to two years.”

There were 2,443 sales last month in the City of Toronto, a 6.1 per cent increase from June 2025. Across the rest of the GTA, home sales were up 11.3 per cent to 4,327.

All housing types saw increased activity throughout the region last month, led by a 14.3 per cent year-over-year increase in condo sales.

Detached home sales were up 9.1 per cent while the number of townhouses sold rose 4.3 per cent. Sales of semi-detached homes increased three per cent.

A report earlier this week from RBC Economics said national housing affordability has improved to its best level in four years, with the condo market showing the most progress.

It said Toronto’s affordability continues to improve at a faster pace than most other markets, even as it remains Canada’s second-least affordable market overall.

But Toronto condo prices have declined sharply in recent years and are nearly back to late 2019 levels, according to the report. For the first time in 16 years, condos in Toronto are now more affordable compared with Montreal, relative to local residents’ income levels.

Meanwhile, single-detached home affordability remains severely strained with ownership costs accounting for more than 80 per cent of a typical Toronto household’s pre-tax income.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 3, 2026.

Sammy Hudes, The Canadian Press