The Spring Market Finally Arrived.
Good Morning. The GTA housing market posted its third straight month of year-over-year sales growth in May — sales up 6.3%, even as the average price held below last year’s level. The catch is the supply side. GTA new listings fell 18.9% year-over-year, the tightest new-listing reading since the rate-hike era of 2022. Demand is finally showing up. The shelves are going bare.
Top Story
The Spring Market Finally Arrived.
Now Watch the Supply.
The GTA marked its third consecutive month of year-over-year sales growth in May. TRREB reported 6,583 home sales, up 6.3% from May 2025, while on a seasonally adjusted basis, sales rose 10% month-over-month from April. The average selling price was $1,069,700, still down 4.6% year-over-year — but the direction of travel changed: on a seasonally adjusted basis, the average price edged up slightly versus April. Nationally, CREA reported the first meaningful monthly sales gain of 2026, up 5.5% month-over-month, with the national average price reaching $702,079, the first reading above $700,000 in 23 months.
The supply side is the complication. GTA new listings totalled 17,698 in May, down 18.9% year-over-year, and active inventory fell to 26,927 — a 14.4% annual decline and the tightest new-listing reading for the region since the rate-hike cycle of 2022. Across Ontario, new listings fell 12.7% year-over-year to 44,665. When sales rise and listings fall at the same time, markets don’t stay balanced for long. The GTA sales-to-new-listings ratio climbed to 37.2% in May, up from 28.6% a year earlier — still technically a buyer’s market, but tightening fast.
TRREB President Daniel Steinfeld credited improved affordability from lower selling prices and borrowing costs, and forecast further improvement through the second half of 2026. Chief Information Officer Jason Mercer was more pointed: if sales keep strengthening relative to listings, selling prices will level off and start to grow into 2027 — but buyers still hold substantial negotiating power for now. The national HPI benchmark edged up 0.2% month-over-month in May, the first positive monthly reading in years. These are early directional signals, and the practitioners positioned ahead of them are having different conversations than those still waiting for confirmation.
For realtors: Sellers who list in the next three to four weeks enter the tightest new-listing window since 2022. That is a pricing conversation, not a discount conversation. The buyers are there; the competition from other listings is not.
For mortgage brokers: Pre-approval timing matters more now. A client holding a rate is better positioned than a client who intends to get one. The summer 2026 window looks narrower than it did six weeks ago.
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Rest of the News
Canada Shrank for the Third Quarter Running
Statistics Canada confirmed June 17 that Canada’s population fell to 41,417,056 as of April 1 — down 55,025 from January 1, the third consecutive quarterly decline and a sequence without precedent in modern Canadian history. The drop was led by Ontario, which lost 32,590 people in the quarter, and was driven primarily by departing non-permanent residents, whose numbers fell by roughly 118,000 nationally. The figures are preliminary and will be updated in September.
The demand floor that practitioners priced into long-range planning — population growth as a permanent backstop — has shifted. Clients building Ontario investment cases on the old population math need the conversation now, not after the next data release.
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Household Debt Beat Income — Again
Statistics Canada’s Q1 2026 National Balance Sheet data showed Canadian households accumulated debt faster than income for the sixth consecutive quarter. Net worth edged up on paper, but the balance sheet underneath is more fragile than the headline asset recovery implies, with a growing share of income directed to debt service.
This lands directly in TDS ratios. Ontario clients who look qualified on rate alone are being caught at the debt-service ceiling. The qualifying conversation needs to happen earlier in the relationship — not at the application stage when the numbers are already locked.
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The Rental Slide Just Hit 20 Months
The June 2026 Rentals.ca National Rent Report showed Canadian asking rents fell 4.7% year-over-year to $2,029 — the 20th consecutive monthly decline. Asking rents are now down in all six of Canada’s largest cities, including Toronto and Ottawa. The report tied the continued softening directly to falling population and rising rental completions, and flagged that the usual summer leasing-season lift has yet to materialize.
The investor cash-flow thesis that powered a decade of small-landlord buying is under real pressure. Clients weighing a rental purchase need current rent math, not 2022 assumptions — and brokers qualifying investor files should expect rental-income projections to come in lighter than borrowers assume.
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Canada Hit $700K. Ontario Still Hasn’t
CREA’s May 2026 national average reached $702,079 — up 1.5% year-over-year and the first reading above $700,000 in 23 months, with seven provinces setting all-time price records. Ontario’s average was $847,813, down 1.5% year-over-year. The national story is early recovery. The Ontario story is still correcting.
National headlines are misfiring client expectations in both directions. Sellers anchor on a recovery narrative that doesn’t apply to their street; buyers underprice the leverage they still hold in Ontario’s softer segments. Closing that gap at the table or the pre-approval meeting is where practitioners add more value than the data itself.
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LONDON
London’s MLS HPI composite benchmark has ticked upward every single month since January 2026 — a steadier trend than almost any GTA market can point to right now. The London and St. Thomas Association of Realtors (LSTAR) reported 638 sales in April, down 6.6% year-over-year, with an average price of $567,400 (down 4% YoY). Condos took the deepest hit at $328,500 (down 15.1% YoY), but at that number, London condos remain accessible to middle-income buyers who can’t qualify at GTA entry points. The market carried roughly five to six months of supply with an SNLR near the buyer’s market boundary — but the monthly benchmark trend is the floor signal worth watching.
For realtors: Show clients the trend, not just the year-over-year number. Six consecutive upward benchmark readings are a floor forming, not noise. Offers with conditions are still standard in London; that flexibility window narrows if national tightening extends into mid-Ontario markets this summer.
For mortgage brokers: At a $567,000 average, London files qualify comfortably under OSFI thresholds at current income levels. The clients who hit a wall qualifying for a GTA townhouse often close cleanly on a London detached. When the GTA pre-approval stalls, London is the pivot that saves the file and keeps the client moving.
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Quick Hits
- NEXT BOC — JULY 15 WITH FULL MPR: First Monetary Policy Report since April. Expect updated GDP, population, and housing projections. This one matters more than the rate decision itself.
- INFLATION JUMPS TO 3.2%: May CPI hit 3.2% YoY (released June 22), the fastest pace since December 2023, driven by gas and food. It complicates any case for a July rate cut.
- CANADA POPULATION AT 41.4 MILLION: Third consecutive quarterly decline confirmed June 17 by Statistics Canada. Revised figures expected in September 2026.
- SEVEN PROVINCES HIT ALL-TIME PRICE RECORDS IN MAY: Quebec, New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Saskatchewan, Alberta. Ontario was not among them.
Tip of the Week
List Now, Not September
The tightest new-listing supply since 2022 is not a forecast — it is the current condition.
The tightest new-listing supply since 2022 is not a forecast — it is the current condition. Sellers who enter the market in the next three to four weeks step into a window where buyer activity is building and competition from other listings is historically thin. By late August, that dynamic typically flips as summer inventory accumulates and buyer urgency fades. The clients thinking about listing this fall need to hear one thing: the best version of this market is not ninety days away. It is now.
According to CREA’s May 2026 data, national home sales rose month-over-month by what percentage — the largest single-month gain of 2026?
The May data is the first chapter of a story that hasn’t been resolved yet. Sales moved. Listings didn’t keep up. The spring arrived late but with real buyers behind it, and those buyers are now entering a market with the least new supply since 2022. That is not the recovery everyone expected — it is quieter, tighter, and more localized than the 2021 version — but the direction shifted in May, and the practitioners who positioned their clients ahead of it are already working the advantage. The July 15 BoC Monetary Policy Report is the next inflection point. That is where the Bank publicly revises its population, growth, and housing assumptions for the rest of 2026. Be in the room before your clients ask you about it.
See you next Tuesday.
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