On Wednesday, Teranet hosted its annual Market Insights Forum in Toronto to share its latest findings.
Overall, the data reveals notable shifts in buyer and seller profiles, highlighting how participation among different groups has evolved in response to changing market conditions.
“The easing of interest rates recently did not bring about the market recovery that a lot of us anticipated,” said Emily Cheung, Director of Data, Analytics and Insights. “While we continue to expect a lot of uncertainty in the coming years, we wanted to take this opportunity to share some of the insights that we’ve gleaned from studying the Ontario Land Registry data in hopes that will help you better understand the real estate market.”
A tale of two housing markets
According to the data, many of the province’s market trends are reversed in its largest city. For instance, while condos make up just 25% of land transfers across Ontario, they surge to 60% in Toronto.
Furthermore, while condos continue to change hands at similar rates as other property types province-wide, Toronto’s market has taken a different turn—though not in the way recent headlines might suggest.
“In 2024, Toronto condos saw a 20% lift year-over-year, whereas in the non-condo space we saw a marginal increase of 4%,” said Cheung, explaining that the Ontario Land Registry tracks changing ownership data, including new builds that were pre-purchased in other years.
“We recognize the new builds when the unit is ready for occupancy, even though the unit might have been pre-sold five-plus years ago, and this new build Real Estate of 15,000 units in 2024 was 78% higher than what we saw in 2023,” she explained. “This flood of new condo units that came online was not part of the story that is out there in the market and perhaps could be a key as to why resale condo sales were at the lowest point in 2024.”
Multi-property owners scaled back
Changing market conditions have also reshaped buyer demographics, with multi-property owners (MPOs) seeing a notable pullback.
Once the largest buying group—responsible for nearly a quarter of transactions in recent years—MPOs, including both investors and recreational buyers, have begun reducing their activity.
“Their activities peaked in 2022 and have since declined a little bit, but are still a very strong cohort,” said Cheung, adding that the group has seen a significant influx of new members in the last decade.
“Over the past 10 years, new MPO purchases accounted for 70% of MPO activities, and only 30% are from existing MPOs, so there’s a lot of people flooding into this market to buy additional properties,” she added.
In fact, the majority of MPOs, 55%, only have two properties, and another 20% have three, suggesting most are individual investors purchasing a recreational or investment property, rather than institutional investors.
In fact, Cheung notes that most MPO transactions involve two buyers, often close in age, indicating that many are likely romantic partners. Millennials now make up nearly 40% of MPOs, surpassing Gen Xers, who represent around 36%.
Big investors got smaller
There is also a significant cohort of MPOs that own more than 11 properties, but their market presence has declined dramatically amid shifting conditions.
In April of 2022, before interest rates started rising, those with 11 or more properties in their portfolio accounted for 13% of Ontario MPOs; today, they account for just 7.2%.
“What that tells us is that between April 2022 and now there’s been an active action by a lot of these MPOs to shrink their portfolio,” Cheung explained. “Portfolio sizes have definitely gotten smaller in the last year and a half.”
Those MPOs that were active in the market last year were largely focused on properties in Toronto, and 30% even made purchases without a mortgage, suggesting an influx of well-funded investors seeking to capitalize on favourable pricing.
“There’s an emergence of a new single-party MPO, with very sufficient financial resources that are defying a lot of these challenging conditions in Ontario,” Cheung said.
Recent buyers took heavy losses
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of those who purchased during the price peak of 2022 and 2023 and have subsequently sold their property have done so at a loss.
“Historically, the rate of loss in Ontario is about 2% to 4%, meaning for every 100 properties that are sold, about two are sold at a loss,” Cheung said. “Among properties that were purchased in 2022 and sold in 2024, one in four of those were sold at a loss.”
Those losses also ranged across the province, with some of the steepest declines seen in Ontario’s cottage country and the GTA.
“Across Ontario, the median loss was about $45,000; in the GTA region, the median loss was $56,000,” Cheung says. “There wasn’t a whole lot of transactions, so that would be kind of a data caveat, but the median loss in Muskoka was $240,000.”
First-time buyers got older
Rising prices, higher interest rates, and other challenging macroeconomic conditions have also had a dramatic effect on the first-time homebuyer segment.
According to Teranet data, first-time buyers make up nearly a quarter of Ontario’s condo market, with a strong preference for properties in and around Toronto. In 2011, first-time buyers in the city spent an average of just under $500,000; by 2024, that number increases to $1.3 million.
“When they made that purchase in 2014, the median age of the first-time buyer was 36 years old,” Cheung said. “By 2019, the median age of the first-time buyer was 38 years old, and by 2024, that age is now 40 years old. So, in the span of 10 years, first-time buyers are four years later getting into the housing market in Ontario.”
Homeowners are increasingly staying put
The third largest category of buyers in Ontario are those switching from one primary residence to another.
While they don’t represent as large a share of the market, they tend to get the most media focus and significantly outspend their first-time and multi-property buying peers.
In 2011, they spent an average of about $700,000, but by 2024 their average purchase price had ballooned to $1.75 million. According to the Teranet data, they are also likely to remain in the same city, as was the case for 70%.
This cohort was very active in the post-pandemic market boom, but have been relatively absent since — especially in Toronto. “As we can understand, a lot of these buyers are probably standing on the sidelines right now,” says Cheung.
That lack of movement from one primary resident to another is also reflected in the length of time owners are holding onto their properties.
“The condo holding period back in 2015 was just under seven years, and it’s now gone to over eight years,” says Cheung. “In the non-condo space, 11 years was the average holding period, now it’s up to 12 and a half.”
In Toronto, specifically, and among non-condo owners, holding periods have ballooned from 13.8 years in 2014 to nearly 18 years a decade later.
“We anticipate more uncertainties in the market from the likes of interest rates, macroeconomic factors and mortgage policy changes,” Cheung concluded.
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Last modified: February 20, 2025
