Returning Canadians, US buyers set their sights on Toronto's housing market

Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada’s old relationship with the United States is “over” – and the cross-border tensions that erupted last year are also convincing many Canadians to reassess their property holdings in the US, with many reportedly ready to sell up and reinvest in Canada.

Last August, a survey of Canadian snowbirds conducted by Burson for Royal LePage found 54% of Canadians who own US residential property were considering selling within a year, with 62% of that group citing the current US political administration as the main driver. Roughly a third of sellers said they planned to direct the proceeds into Canadian real estate.

The main reasons for that political discord are no secret: a wave of tariffs launched by US president Donald Trump after taking office, coupled with his repeated remarks that Canada should become the US’s so-called 51st state.

And even though Canada’s national housing market has struggled to find its feet so far in 2026, some mortgage industry members have noted higher interest from Canadians who had moved south of the border but are now weighing up a move back home.

Drew Donaldson (pictured top), the Toronto-based founder and chief executive officer at Donaldson Capital, told Canadian Mortgage Professional his firm is fielding a growing share of business from people relocating into the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

That cohort includes not just Canadians hoping to return after a stint in the US, but also Americans who see opportunity in the Toronto market because of a stronger US dollar and the opportunity to snap up deals.

“We seem to be getting [interest] from Americans that are buying in the Toronto market as of late – relocations and things like that – and people who are originally Canadian that may be moving back,” he said.

Why more Americans and expat Canadians are considering Toronto

Much is made of the brain drain from Canada to the US, but while the flow going the other way is less noteworthy, Donaldson still sees it as a positive trend for the Toronto market.

“People only talk about all the people exiting Toronto to go to the US,” he said. “And I agree that there is a large cohort of people doing that, but there’s also some flowing back the other way.”

While the political factors grab headlines, Donaldson sees other reasons, including currency advantages and job considerations, as key drivers of the trend.

“I think it’s relocation with their jobs and liking how low the Canadian dollar is,” he said. “Some of those people who do move [to the US], sometimes two years later they move back.”

Canada's federal restriction on non-resident buyers, the Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act, remains in force until January 1, 2027, and generally blocks non-Canadians from buying residential properties of three units or fewer inside census metropolitan areas, a category that includes the GTA.

The ban doesn't apply to larger buildings with four or more dwelling units. But the rules carry exemptions wide enough to cover much of the American demand Donaldson is describing: non-Canadians holding a valid work permit can buy one residential property, provided the permit has at least 183 days of validity remaining at the time of purchase, with no requirement to prove full-time employment or submit tax filings.

Non-Canadians purchasing jointly with a Canadian spouse or common-law partner are exempt as well, meaning an American relocating for work, or buying alongside a Canadian partner, can legally purchase in Toronto despite the ban still being in effect.

Financing challenges for cross-border buyers

The process to secure a mortgage for a buyer coming from south of the border isn’t necessarily any more complex than for someone who’s already based in Canada, although compliance timing can be a friction point.

Funds arriving from the US are subject to the same anti-money laundering scrutiny as funds from any other country, regardless of the closeness of the two economies.

Canadian financial institutions are required to verify the source of large incoming funds under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (PCMLTFA), which is enforced by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC).

A lead time of 30 to 45 days applies regardless of whether the buyer is a returning Canadian or first-time American purchaser, and those who don’t plan for it can run into closing delays.

That means the biggest advantage mortgage brokers can often offer cross-border buyers isn't necessarily a particular rate or product, but rather familiarity with how to sequence financing, currency conversion and compliance checks so a cross-border move doesn't stall at the closing table.

"And we can really help and add value to Americans or past Canadians that are moving back to Toronto," Donaldson said. "We can use their US income and we can do various different things to help with their mortgage."

CMP

We hope you are finding our Blog informative and enjoyable to read while keeping you up to date with the ever changing real estate market. 

Please feel free to contact me via Direct/Text or e-mail at any time and my team will be pleased to assist you, family members and friends with all your real estate needs. Referrals are always welcome and rewarded!

‘Its own little beast': why Toronto's condo market is still struggling

On the face of it, a big year-over-year jump in sales activity in Toronto’s condo market last month might suggest reason for optimism in the sector. But condo prices are continuing to plummet across the city – and that trend could still have some way to run.

In the city centre, average condo prices slipped by 9% while they dropped by 10.6% across the wider 905 region in June, moving the overall Greater Toronto Area (GTA) average to $630,688 – a precipitous slide from their pandemic-era highs.

Toronto-area broker Micky Khaneka (pictured top) of MKG Mortgages said while he’s confident homebuying appetite will continue to improve in Toronto during the final six months of 2026, he’s not so sure about an uptick in condo purchase activity.

That’s because the familiar challenges facing the sector – excessive supply, appraisal problems and lack of demand – are still a big factor weighing against the market’s performance, even years after those hurdles first emerged.

“The condo market is its own little beast,” Khaneka told Canadian Mortgage Professional. “The number of units still available on the market is so [high]. I think it might be a little bit longer before that starts to be absorbed with the amount of interest we have in that sector.”

Perhaps the biggest conundrum facing the condo market is the glut of so-called “dog crate” units across the city. Those properties, built specifically to be rented out, are often sub-500-square-foot apartments whose popularity soared over the past two decades before plunging in recent years as rental demand nosedived, interest rates climbed, and immigration levels dropped.

But Khaneka highlighted a rare silver lining in the current market: the fact that young professionals whose chances of buying a condo disappeared amid rampant price appreciation are suddenly facing a much-improved environment.

A window for first-time buyers

A new Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) report highlighted that affordability in the sector has improved sharply over the past two years, with the banking giant’s affordability index for condos now just slightly higher than its pre-pandemic level.

“The price correction, alongside steadily rising incomes, has helped roll back the pandemic-era affordability deterioration entirely,” the RBC Economics analysis said. 

That’s a positive development for first-time buyers, Khaneka said, even if plenty of potential buyers are also holding out and waiting for prices to fall further. “I’m hopeful to see that prices coming down is creating opportunities,” he said.

“Are these first-time homebuyers and young professionals going to capitalize at this ideal entry point? I do see them doing so. I just don’t know how close we are to it or how long it might still take, given there are a lot of units out there.”

For renters hoping to buy a condo, the current market might offer their best chance in years. “It’s a perfect opportunity for people to get their foot in the market, build some equity, and then as they go into the next phase of life… they can always add on to that equity and ultimately use it as a stepping stone for the next purchase,” he said.

“Prices are back to pre-pandemic levels, and there are a lot of units still left, which puts the ball right back in the buyer’s court.”

Appraisal risks linger amid thin equity

But the falling values are also continuing to pose appraisal challenges, for homeowners looking to refinance or consolidate debt as well as for hopeful buyers.

That “ongoing issue” is still going strong – and many buyers who purchased between 2020 and now put down less than 20%, leaving thin equity cushions even as debt loads climb.

While the condo market’s well-documented struggles might be set to continue, Khaneka stressed that the overall picture for the Toronto market is more positive, and that the condo sector could remain an outlier as other segments improve.

“I’m more positive for the remainder of the year than the last six months,” he said. “I’m hoping not to be wrong, and this is just the start of something special.”

CMP

We hope you are finding our Blog informative and enjoyable to read while keeping you up to date with the ever changing real estate market. 

Please feel free to contact me via Direct/Text or e-mail at any time and my team will be pleased to assist you, family members and friends with all your real estate needs. Referrals are always welcome and rewarded!

Canada's housing recovery hits a bumpy patch in June

Canada's housing recovery took an uneven turn in June, with home resales sliding across five major markets even as Toronto posted its first sign of price stabilization in more than a year.

In a July 6 report, Robert Hogue, assistant chief economist at RBC Economics, said resales slipped in Fraser Valley, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton and Montreal last month, while Vancouver and Toronto extended gains that followed a disappointing winter.

Toronto shows signs of stabilizing, but condos lag behind

Toronto's benchmark home price held flat on a seasonally adjusted basis between May and June, its first monthly increase since January 2025, even though the index remained 5.4% below year-ago levels, Hogue reported.

Resales rose 1.4% from May but stayed 34% under pre-pandemic levels, underscoring how early the turnaround remains.

The recovery has not reached every corner of the market. As Canadian Mortgage Professional reported in a recent look at Toronto's stalled condo segment, condo prices in the city core and surrounding 905 region were still falling by a combined 6.4% as of May.

Toronto mortgage agent Taz Zaide of 6ix Mortgage Group previously told CMP that many buyers are waiting for further price cuts before committing.

"I don't see anybody trying to rush into it," Zaide said. "Lots of people want to sell, but people don't want to buy."

Meanwhile, GTA Realtors reported 1,714 condo apartment sales throughToronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB)'s MLS System in June. That's a 14.3% increase compared with June 2025, the strongest year-over-year gain among the four housing categories TRREB tracks.

Vancouver and Calgary chart different paths to recovery

Vancouver's home resales rose more than 3% month over month in June, RBC estimated, building on a 6.6% May advance. However, the benchmark price still fell 6% year over year, with detached homes and condos both down more than 7%.

That softness echoes CMP's coverage of Metro Vancouver's cooling condo market in May, where Greater Vancouver Realtors economist Andrew Lis described a market tracking closely to forecast, with "no obvious near-term catalysts" to shift conditions in either direction.

Calgary told a steadier story. New listings there fell 8% from May, tightening the market and helping slow price declines to 2.1% year over year, down from 3.2% in January, according to RBC.

Condos remained the weak spot, with transactions and benchmark prices down 20% and 9%, respectively, over the past year.

Montreal, meanwhile, saw resales ease nearly 4% from May as ownership costs tested affordability, though single-family prices still climbed 3.5% annually.

Hogue attributed the broader hesitancy to Canada's shrinking population, interest rates no longer falling, and lingering economic uncertainty, themes brokers have flagged in CMP's analysis of the country's weakening mortgage origination pace.

Whether Ontario and British Columbia's easing inventory translates into firmer prices, he said, will depend on how quickly demand and new sellers return to balance.

CMP

We hope you are finding our Blog informative and enjoyable to read while keeping you up to date with the ever changing real estate market. 

Please feel free to contact me via Direct/Text or e-mail at any time and my team will be pleased to assist you, family members and friends with all your real estate needs. Referrals are always welcome and rewarded!

Mom and Dad say the early '80s were harder for homebuyers. They're not completely right.

When I read new analysis from KPMG in Australia this week, it confirmed what many Canadian mortgage brokers have suspected for years: when you measure total interest payments as a share of household income, today's borrowers are carrying more than the generation that faced double-digit rates. Yes, the headline rate was higher then. But the house was cheaper. The debt was smaller. 

The Bank of Canada prime rate peaked in 1981, at around 22%. By 1989 it had already fallen to 13-14% and was declining. So when a Canadian client's parent says "we survived 20% rates," they are probably right. The monthly pain was real. But the house they bought in 1981 cost roughly three to four times their household income. The mortgage on that house, even at 20%, was smaller in absolute terms than the mortgage a first home buyer in Toronto or Vancouver takes on today. 

As Mortgage Introducer reported this week, the same structural argument holds across markets where prices have outrun incomes for three decades. In Canada, it holds with particular force. 

The numbers 

The national average sale price was $673,335 in December 2025, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association - roughly unchanged from December 2024 but up around 57% from the national average of approximately $430,000 in 2015. The National Bank of Canada Housing Affordability Monitor puts the national mortgage payment as a percentage of household income at 52.3% in Q1 2026 - still well above its long-term average of 40.6% since 2000, even after nine consecutive quarters of improvement. 

The national figure conceals the extremes. In Toronto, buying the average home ($941,800) requires a household income of roughly $207,000 to qualify at current rates, according to Ratehub's March 2026 Affordability Report. The National Bank Monitor puts the Greater Toronto Area mortgage payment to income ratio at 70.9% in Q1 2026 - above its long-term average of 54.4%. In Vancouver, the ratio of house prices to median income is among the highest of any city in the developed world. The median first-time buyer age in Vancouver is now 46, and in Toronto it is 40, according to a November 2025 global analysis by Bloom Holding. 

Read that again. The median person buying their first home in Vancouver is 46 years old. 

In the early 1980s, the generation now citing their high rates got on the ladder in their mid to late twenties at three to four times their income. The rate was brutal and temporary. The debt was smaller and manageable. By the time rates fell - and they fell dramatically through the 1980s and 1990s - those buyers held an asset that had appreciated substantially and a mortgage that had become cheap to service. 

Three things the comparison omits 

Prices have left incomes behind. CREA data shows the national average home price rose from approximately $430,000 in 2015 to $673,335 in December 2025 - a rise of around 57%. Statistics Canada's Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours shows median wage growth of roughly 15-18% over the same period. CMHC's 2026 Housing Market Outlook calculates that Canada needs to build between 430,000 and 480,000 homes per year through 2035 just to restore 2019 affordability levels - itself an acknowledgment that prices have moved structurally beyond income growth. 

The deposit timeline has extended, not shortened. CMHC's 2025 Mortgage Consumer Survey found the average time to save a down payment was 3.4 years nationally. That sounds manageable until you look at the cities. Vancouver's median first-time buyer age of 46 reflects a saving period that, for most buyers, extends well over a decade. The 1981 generation did not face a decade of saving before they could start paying those high rates. 

The new 30-year amortization is a symptom, not a solution. Canada extended insured mortgage amortization to 30 years for first-time buyers in December 2024. The intention was to reduce monthly payments and improve access. The structural effect is to spread a much larger debt across a longer period - reducing the monthly number while increasing total interest paid over the life of the loan. A 25-year mortgage at 20% on a $150,000 house costs less in total interest than a 30-year mortgage at 5% on a $700,000 house. 

The rate was higher. But. 

The rate was higher, briefly, in 1981. The house was three to four times income. The deposit took three or four years to save. The mortgage was paid off in 25 years. Today's buyer in Toronto or Vancouver faces a house at twelve times income, a deposit that consumes a decade of saving, and an amortization period stretched to 30 years to make the monthly payment bearable - at a rate that, while lower in percentage terms, applies to a debt that is structurally much larger. 

The National Bank of Canada Housing Affordability Monitor's Q1 2026 report puts it plainly: even after the longest streak of consecutive affordability improvement ever recorded, the national mortgage payment as a share of income remains "well above its long-term average." CMHC's 2026 Housing Market Outlook describes the year ahead as likely to be "one of the weakest in recent decades" for housing demand, with prices showing only modest movement and supply still running well short of what is needed to restore affordability. 

That is the context in which your clients are making the biggest financial decision of their lives. This is why they need your help.

CMP

We hope you are finding our Blog informative and enjoyable to read while keeping you up to date with the ever changing real estate market. 

Please feel free to contact me via Direct/Text or e-mail at any time and my team will be pleased to assist you, family members and friends with all your real estate needs. Referrals are always welcome and rewarded!

Canadian homebuyers cite affordability, not uncertainty, as chief barrier

Most Canadians who do not own a home have no plans to buy one in the coming year, and a new survey identifies affordability — not fear of economic turmoil — as the dominant force keeping them out of the market.

The findings, published in June by NerdWallet Canada and conducted by Angus Reid, surveyed 1,501 adults between May 26 and 29, 2026. Among non-homeowners, 55% said they had no interest in buying a home in the next 12 months, and only 6% planned to purchase a first home over that period.

The survey pinned the reluctance on present-day costs rather than future risk. Nearly a quarter of respondents (23%) said living costs that were too high or unpredictable were preventing them from moving, followed by an inability to afford a down payment (18%). Other frequently cited obstacles included competing financial priorities (17%), waiting for prices to fall (16%) and mortgage rates being too high (15%). By contrast, unease over the US trade dispute (6%) and job-security worries (8%) ranked far lower.

That reading aligns with independent institutional data. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. projects the economy to grow just 0.7% in 2026, one of the weakest years in recent decades outside a recession. The agency attributes softening prices to a large resale inventory, persistent affordability challenges and weak sales, and warns that a mild recession cannot be ruled out if business investment falters.

Sentiment sours as prices stay elevated

Negative views of the market were widespread. Almost nine in 10 respondents (88%) agreed that homes in Canada are overpriced, and 69% said the market is unfair to first-time buyers. A further 68% said the market is too focused on housing as an investment. Just 14% said the market is functioning the way it should.

A generational split ran through the data. Among those aged 18 to 34, 63% agreed that homeownership feels out of reach, roughly double the 31% recorded among respondents 55 and older. Agreement that homes are overpriced was also higher among younger respondents, at 92%, compared with 82% of those 55 and older.

The affordability squeeze persists even as prices ease. The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) reported its benchmark price index fell 4.1% year-over-year in May 2026, yet the national average sale price still edged up 1.5% over the same period, leaving ownership beyond reach for many.

Buyers wait as spring market recovers

The survey found demand simmering rather than dead: 35% of non-homeowners said they wanted to buy but would likely keep renting (28%) or living with relatives (7%). Interest was lowest among non-owning women, 62% of whom reported no plans to buy, compared with 47% of non-owning men.

Recent market data suggests some of that demand is beginning to move. CREA reported that home sales rose 5.5% month-over-month in May 2026, and the national sales-to-new-listings ratio tightened to 49.2% from 46.2% in April. CREA chair Garry Bhaura tied the shift to seasonal timing.

"The spring market appears to have been delayed by a month or so," Bhaura said.

The report also gauged views on the industry's intermediaries. Fewer than one in five respondents (18%) said real estate agents provide a lot of value during the buying process, while 41% said they bring some value and only 6% said they provide none.

CMP

We hope you are finding our Blog informative and enjoyable to read while keeping you up to date with the ever changing real estate market. 

Please feel free to contact me via Direct/Text or e-mail at any time and my team will be pleased to assist you, family members and friends with all your real estate needs. Referrals are always welcome and rewarded!