Something can be true and also mostly irrelevant.

Consider the recent headlines about mortgage defaults increasing in Ontario in the last part of 2024.

The wording used is pretty clear.  There has been an “enormous” increase and we’re seeing defaults “surge” as more and more people struggle with making their mortgage payments.  These are tough times and it seems like most of your neighbours will soon be on the street.

The first article linked above is from blogTO and in it, we have this alarming statistic.  “When looking at the fourth quarter of the year versus the same time in 2023, there was a shocking 90.2 per cent increase in the number of Ontarians who hadn’t made a mortgage payment in 90 days or more, with over 11,000 households having missed at least one payment.”

Seeing a 90% increase in people who are not making their mortgage payments is absolutely a huge change, however, the actual stats about homeowners who missed payments for at least 90 days – the data that Equifax Canada recently released and that sparked these headlines – looks like this:

  • Q4 2023 – 0.12% of total mortgages
  • Q3 2024 – 0.19% of total mortgages
  • Q4 2024 – 0.22% of total mortgages

Did the number of people not making their mortgage payments almost double in the last part of 2024 compared to the same time in 2023?  Absolutely.  Is it a lot of people?  Nope.

In Toronto, for example, we have a population of around 3.02 million people and the home ownership rate is around 65%.  Some of those people won’t have mortgages, but let’s do the worst case scenario and say everyone who owns a home does have a mortgage and 0.22% of them haven’t made payments in the last 90 days of 2024.  That means that about 24,000 of the 1,967,000 mortgages are having trouble making payments.

While that is still a significant number of homeowners facing financial struggles, it remains a very tiny portion of homeowners in Ontario.

We’re real estate agents, not mortgage brokers or lenders, but these headlines did get us thinking about how there are often incorrect inferences made from accurate data about the real estate market.  We decided to take a hot topic these days – the level of condo units coming on the market – and take you behind the scenes.  Let’s get into it.

The Mother of All Charts

The good folks at the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, in partnership with PropTx and Habistat, have started producing some very interesting charts.  Take a look at the below chart, because we’re going to use this single chart to show you exactly what is happening in the condo market.

Here’s what we see when we look at this chart.

So, there’s 431 more condo units for sale in Toronto.  Big deal.

If we look at the two blue bars in the chart, we see that as of the end of December, 2024, there were 3,778 condo apartments for sale in Toronto, and that a month later, there were 4,209 units for sale.  That’s 431 more condo units, but that’s hardly news, right?

We’d agree with you, particularly because December is typically the slowest month of the year, both for sales as well as new listings.  The fact that we have more active listings in January is pretty typical and going up by a bit over 10% isn’t particularly unusual.

Let’s look deeper.

Wait, almost 3,000 new condo listings hit the market?!

The green bar represents the number of new condo unit listings in January in Toronto and we saw 2,904 new listings hit the market.  That number equals 77% of the total active listings at the start of the month, so we’re seeing a huge increase in more condo units for sale!  Prices will collapse, sellers will pound the table in frustration and dogs will cower in the corner.

Wait a minute, we had about 3,800 active listings at the start of January and then we had about 2,900 new listings during the month, so how did we end the month with just over 4,200 active listings?  Where’d they all go?

Why sell when you can terminate?

The four red bars in the chart represent listings that went off the market.

The first, smallest one is suspensions, with 159 condo listings suspended during the month.  Real estate agents are supposed to suspend a listing when a seller wants to be off the market temporarily but will be returning to being actively listed for sale soon.  We say “supposed to”, as we’ve seen suspended listings from years ago, so some agents just suspend a listing and it remains sort of on the market.  Call it Schrodinger’s condo.

The second smallest red bar is expirations, with 434 condo listings expiring in January, 2025.  All listings have a listing term, where the agent is given permission to list the property for sale and when the listing period ends, the system automatically marks the listing as expired.  It won’t show up on searches anymore as from the perspective of TRREB, there is no longer permission to try to sell that property.

The third red bar over is transactions, which is condo units that actually sold in January.  We saw 771 condo units sell in the city in January and if that strikes you as not a great number, you’re right.  We started with about 3,800 active listings, then we had 2,900 more listings hit the market, and in a full month, only 771 of those properties sold.  That works out to about 12% of the total available units over the course of the month, or 20% of the units that were on the market at the start of the month.  Ouch.

Our final, and largest, red bar is terminations.  When a seller decides to no longer sell their property, they sign paperwork to terminate the listing.  It’s not sold, it’s not suspended, it’s not expired – it’s just cancelled.  We had 1,109 condo units terminated in January and it’s unknown what happened with those listings.  We certainly suspect that a significant number of them were relisted at a lower price and showed up as part of the 2,900 “new” listings that hit the market in January.  As TRREB allows listings to be terminated and relisted immediately, it certainly muddies the waters.

Pick a stat, any stat.

The beauty of this chart is that it shows very clearly what happens when you rely on any one stat about the market as an indicator of what is happening.

  • If you compare the number of active condo listings from December, 2024 to January, 2025, it looks like a pretty reasonable increase in active listings as the new year gets started.
  • If you look at the number of new condo listings that came on the market in January, you’d think we’re seeing a massive increase in options for buyers and prices should drop.
  • If you look at the suspensions, expirations, and terminations of condo listings in January, you see that there was a ton of activity around unsuccessful listings and it seems like a very messy month to be trying to sell a condo in the city.
  • Finally, if you look at the number of actual transactions (sold condo units), you’d see that it’s the third lowest number in the chart. We saw four times as many new listings as we did sales and 44% more terminations than actual sales.

We absolutely love the data that’s in this chart, as it shows a completely different story than what you would see if you focused on just one of the stats.

If you’re thinking about buying or selling, you need real estate agents that don’t rely on headlines or use one stat as an indication of what’s happening in your specific market.  Anyone who takes that approach will cost you money, either by having you overpay when you buy, or by leaving money on the table when you sell.  If you’d rather get the best results on your purchase or sale, then get in touch with us!