One of the challenges with talking about the real estate market is the idea that there is, in fact, “the” real estate market. The reality is that real estate markets differ considerably based on location, housing type, price ranges and attributes.
Despite this, the way the media – and some real estate agents – present real estate news is often in the context of what’s happening in “the” market. This means that the overall impression most people have of what’s happening in real estate is based on averages across multiple geographies and housing types with a wide range of prices as well as attributes.
Even the more nuanced stories typically only go down a level. A headline that says “Condo prices plummet” may have detail about the average price for the market and then break it down further into what condo apartment units are selling for on average. The same article would likely not make any distinction between the attributes of condo units and how those attributes change the average selling price. A person who owns a three-bedroom condo in Yorkville may wrongly assume that the value of their unit has collapsed, when it is in fact the one-bedroom units in Liberty Village that have seen their average price drop dramatically.
When we work with clients who are buying or selling real estate in the high-end market, the headlines and stories about “the” market are almost completely irrelevant. For properties in the $5M-plus range, it is a completely different market than the one discussed in most real estate news articles.
Let’s take a look at what’s going on in the high-end market in Toronto.
Wait, is there such a thing as the high-end market?
Right off the bat, we almost fell prey to the same issue we discussed above. As of the end of August 2026, there are 234 freehold homes for sale in Toronto for over $5M. Actually, scratch that. One of those properties is the most expensive home on the market right now, listed at a cool $989M. It was previously listed at $899,000, so it appears the listing agent made a mistake and added a few extra zeros when he adjusted the price.
So, we have 233 freehold homes for sale in Toronto for over $5M. The problem with drawing any inferences from what’s happening in “the” high-end market for the entire city is the range of properties within that dataset.
- One of the homes is listed for $48M and one is listed for $5M. The $5M home is a three-bedroom, three-washroom house at Sheppard and Midland, while the $48M home sits on more than six acres of ravine land in the Bridle Path neighbourhood of Toronto. Both are technically redevelopment opportunities, but whatever is happening at the $5M level is far different than the market at the close-to-$50M level.
- The 233 homes for sale over $5M are spread across 38 neighbourhoods of Toronto, but almost half of them are in just three neighbourhoods. Bridlepath-Sunnybrook-York Mills accounts for 22% of the dataset, St Andrews-Windfields is 12% of the dataset and Forest Hill South is also 12% of the dataset. While we could talk about what “the” $5M-plus market is doing in Toronto, if we applied that logic to Long Branch or Guildwood or any of the 24 neighbourhoods with just one or two of those listings, it wouldn’t be very accurate.
- Even the type and style of the homes for sale over $5M vary considerably. While almost all are detached homes (with just a sprinkling of multiplexes and vacant land in the mix), some are two-storey homes, some are three-storey homes and some are bungalows. They have five bedrooms on average, but one is a multiplex with 21 bedrooms and another is a tear-down with just one bedroom!
With such a range of price points, locations and types of homes, there is no one buyer for “the” high-end market in Toronto. We can feel pretty confident in making that statement, but it isn’t helpful for a seller who is considering putting their singular home up for sale.
Whenever we work with clients in the high-end market, we do a deep dive into the stats and comparables to be able to tell them what’s actually happening with homes similar to their place. Here’s an example of what that looks like with the neighbourhood of Lawrence Park South.
Oh, what a year!
The high-end market can be slower moving than the market as a whole. There are simply fewer buyers who are looking for homes over $5M than who are looking in the $1M range. While sellers benefit from less competition than at lower price points, there are correspondingly fewer buyers as well. As such, whenever we are working with a high-end seller client, we look back at what’s happened in their area in the past year.
In Lawrence Park South, we had 81 MLS listings with activity in the past year (September 2025 to August 2026) on the MLS system. Activity can be a listing, a sale or everything in between. That seems like a lot of activity for homes over $5M in one neighbourhood of Toronto, so let’s dig in a bit deeper.
Who wants to sell anyway?
With 81 individual MLS listings for over $5M in Lawrence Park South in the past year, it’s not a surprise that some didn’t sell. The level of failed sales, though, might surprise you, as 47 of those 81 MLS listings were terminated without selling. That’s 58% of the activity on the market. If you took your family into an apple orchard to pick your own apples, and 58 of the 100 trees had signs on them saying “NOT FOR PICKING”, you’d certainly come away with the perception that there aren’t actually many trees available, despite the size of the orchard. If we add in the expired listings (10 out of the 81) and the suspended listing (just one out of the 81), there’s another 14% of the market that isn’t actually available or sold. The apple orchard just added another 14 trees to the “no picking” section, so now 72 out of the 100 trees are unavailable.
Surely there are some places that sold?
Just 11 out of the 81 listings actually sold in the past year. That means about 14% of all of the activity on the market resulted in sales. One example we looked at had been on the market for six years with the same agent, so it’s clear that the prestige of listing a high-end home doesn’t always – or quickly – translate into sale commissions. Out of the 100 trees in our apple orchard, there are 13 bare trees that people had picked clean.
You’ve got dozens of choices. Well, one dozen.
There are 11 properties for sale over $5M in Lawrence Park South at their original list price, plus one more that has changed its price since listing. That’s an even dozen options in the neighbourhood (about 15% of the 81 MLS listings with activity) and, to use that apple orchard analogy again, it means that only 15 out of the 100 apple trees are actually available for picking.
Enough with the apple trees.
Analogies can be useful, but they can also break down when we get into the real analysis of what happened. Let’s talk specifics about the activity in this $5M-plus market of Lawrence Park South over the past year and what it means.
Despite having 81 MLS listings with activity in the past year, a number of those listings are for the same property. While it appears we’ve had a lot of things happening with over 80 MLS listings showing up in the search, when we filter for terminations, relistings and other changes, we actually just had 39 properties that were active in the past year in Lawrence Park South.
As we discussed above, 11 sold while still listed at $5M or more, while two more eventually sold after being relisted below $5M. In terms of the 39 properties, once we filter out the noise, it means that 13 sold over the course of the year, which is just 33% of the market. Put another way, one in three properties successfully transacted.
There are 12 houses out of the 39 properties that are still for sale, though if we include the ones that have relisted and dropped their list price below $5M, we have two more. With 14 out of 39 properties still for sale, that means that 36% of properties continue to try to sell.
The remaining 12 properties in our activity pool are now all off the market in various fashions. Seven of them were terminated and are not coming back on the market, with four more that expired with no further reappearance. This is largely just a technical difference, as a termination is an active cancellation of a listing, versus an expiry, which is an automatic removal from active listing when the contract term ends. Finally, we had one listing that was suspended, which is required when a seller needs to stop showings for more than a day or two. The property in question has been suspended for more than two months, so it might be an unofficial termination that just hasn’t been properly updated. Put these off-the-market properties together and they equal about another 31% of the market.
Here’s what “the” high-end market in Lawrence Park South looks like.
While it isn’t exactly 33/33/33, the review of the $5M-plus market in Lawrence Park South over the past year basically shows that a third of the properties sold, a third are still for sale and a third gave up and are off the market.
The properties that sold ended up selling for about 87% of their original list price, and five of them required multiple listing attempts to sell. They took about 60 days to sell on average, including any relisting attempts.
For the places still for sale, the current average days on market is 213 days, with a range of 12 days to 468 days. This is markedly different from the 60 days on average for homes that did sell, so we see that when the pricing is off, properties at this price point can sit a long, long time. Right now, nine of the 14 properties for sale have been listed for more than 180 days.
This sort of analysis is very specific to a given neighbourhood and needs to take into account lots of different factors. If you’re considering buying or selling in the $5M price range, you need to work with agents who know how to tell you what your market is doing, rather than just talking about the market. If that sounds appealing, then get in touch with us!
