Vancouver’s west side detached homes sold for $1,072 a square foot in the first half of 2026, more than four times the $225 a square foot buyers paid for a Regina condo over the same stretch, according to Century 21 Canada’s newest price-per-square-foot survey.
The survey, released in July and covering 50 communities from January through June 2026 compared with the same period in prior years back to 2018, found the country’s real estate market pulling in opposite directions at once. Regina’s detached homes posted the steepest gain in Canada, up 13.09 per cent year over year, while Vancouver’s downtown condos posted the steepest drop, down 14.93 per cent.
“Canada’s real estate pricing story is a diverse one, and we are seeing significant variation in prices, and price trends, down to the individual neighbourhood,” said Todd Shyiak, executive vice-president of Century 21 Canada, in a statement accompanying the survey’s release.
Nowhere was that variation sharper than in Ontario, which Century 21 identified as the country’s most challenged region. Ottawa detached homes fell 13.77 per cent, and Ottawa townhouses dropped 17.96 per cent, the steepest townhouse decline recorded anywhere in the survey. Toronto held up better by comparison: a downtown condo there still sold for $650 a square foot, and a detached home in nearby Mississauga fetched $760 a square foot.
British Columbia’s market was similarly split. Vancouver’s core neighbourhoods kept some of the highest prices in the country (west side detached homes at $1,072 a square foot, downtown condos at $1,026, and East Side detached homes at $807) even as those same segments posted some of the sharpest year-over-year losses. Farther from the city centre, prices held up better: Langley detached homes reached $859 a square foot, a new entry to the survey’s priciest tier, while Kelowna and Chilliwack stayed relatively stable, Century 21 said.
The Prairies told the opposite story. Regina, Brandon, Winnipeg and Saskatoon all posted year-over-year gains, with Regina’s 13.09 per cent increase in detached prices the strongest in the country. Even so, Prairie prices remain a fraction of the national high end: a Regina condo, at $225 a square foot, and an Edmonton condo, at $237, rank among the least expensive housing measured anywhere in Canada.
Atlantic Canada showed the same divide in miniature. Halifax detached homes rose 0.46 per cent to $438 a square foot, and Charlottetown gained 2.40 per cent to $256, the only two Atlantic markets Century 21 recorded as positive this year. Moncton fell 3.28 per cent to $236 a square foot, Fredericton dropped 7.26 per cent to $230, and Saint John declined 6.91 per cent to $229. Century 21 noted a Halifax detached home now costs roughly 86 per cent more per square foot than one in Moncton, despite the two cities sitting less than a five-hour drive apart.
The regional split lines up with national figures the Canadian Real Estate Association released Sept. 15. CREA reported the national average home price at $668,219 in August, up just 0.6 per cent from a year earlier even as sales volume fell 6.9 per cent year over year and its benchmark price index slipped 3 per cent. “Sales activity and price trends were largely unchanged for a fourth consecutive month in August,” CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart said in the association’s release. “What has changed is the broader economic environment.”
Neither CREA nor Century 21 attributed the regional divergence to a single cause, but the pattern in both data sets points the same direction: affordability pressure and economic uncertainty concentrated in Ontario and parts of British Columbia, while Prairie cities, still comparatively cheap by national standards, continue to draw price gains buyers elsewhere in the country have not seen in years.
