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We may be in the thick of a housing crisis, but there’s still a deluge of condo listings that are sitting, more or less untouched, on the Greater Toronto Area’s market. According to a figure provided to STOREYS by Urbanation President, Shaun Hildebrand, the GTA is currently grappling with almost 40,000 units of condo supply in limbo of some sort — be that unsold units in development, assignment listings, or resale listings on the MLS.
Hildebrand said in a previous article from earlier this month that that level of supply is something “the market has never seen and will take some time to absorb, especially given that completions are projected to remain at record highs for the next couple years.”
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A break-down of stagnant condo supply provided more recently by Hildebrand shows that there are around 24,000 unsold condo units in development across the GTA, around 9,000 active condo resale listings, and an estimated 5,000 units that are finishing construction and listed on assignment. (So we're not quite at 40,000 units, but we're getting there.)
“At current sales levels it would take over 50 months to absorb all the supply available in the new and resale condominium markets,” Hildebrand tells STOREYS. That estimate doesn’t include assignment listings, he notes, as Urbanation doesn’t have absorption data for the assignment segment.
Speaking to just new and resale condos, Hildebrand points out the (arguably) obvious: 50 months is by no means a ‘normal’ pace of absorption for this amount of supply.
“A balanced level of new and resale condo supply should take about 14 to 16 months to absorb. Basically, this means that supply is at least 3.5 times higher than normal,” he explains. “Sales are so slow right now that they really can’t go any lower — new condo sales were at a nearly 30-year low in Q3.”
“The slowdown in new condo sales starting in the second half of 2022 is a key factor for the rise in inventory. Although a lot of projects that were supposed to launch for presales were held back given the slowing sales environment, a sizeable number still went ahead despite the slowing market,” Hildebrand goes on to say. “About 35,000 units were launched for presales since the second half of 2022, even with developers having put on the brakes in Q3-2024 — only one project launched last quarter. Over the same period, there were about 22,000 new condo sales. As a result, unsold new condo inventory accumulated very quickly, rising 58% over the past two years.”
Meanwhile, according to Urbanation’s latest quarterly report on the GTA’s new condo segment, condo completions reached a record high in 2023 (with 24,114 units completed), and are “on track” to reach another record high of 24,386 units in 2024, and then another record high of 29,409 units in 2025.
At the same time, “a lot of investors have looked to offload units, which has pushed up resale inventory and also brought more assignment listings online,” says Hildebrand, pointing to the fact that active resale listings are up a staggering 92% over the past two years.
“As sales begin to show some improvement with lower interest rates and increased market optimism, and developers remain cautious in launching new projects, and some projects ultimately get cancelled or converted to rental, supply should decline next year,” he adds. “Although it may take a while to get back to a balanced state.”
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- 6,800 New Condo Units Changed To Rental, Cancelled, In Receivership Since 2022 Across GTHA ›
- Average GTA Condo Prices Dropped By 23K YoY In Q3 ›