The gap between Canada’s weakest and strongest condominium market in August was more than 12 percentage points, according to figures released over the past nine days by four of the country’s largest real estate boards.
Calgary’s apartment benchmark price fell 8.2 per cent from a year earlier to $295,400, the Calgary Real Estate Board reported Sept. 1. Three days later, the Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers said the median price of a Montreal-area condominium rose four per cent to $437,250. Between those two releases, Greater Vancouver Realtors put its apartment benchmark down 6.6 per cent, and the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board recorded a 3.6 per cent drop in the average condo apartment price.
Read individually, as each was, the four releases describe four local slowdowns. Read together, they describe something else. The segment that Canadian housing coverage routinely treats as a single national story is now moving in opposite directions depending on the city.
The clearest evidence is not the price change itself but where the condo sits within each market. In Calgary, apartments were the worst-performing property type by a wide margin. The city’s overall residential benchmark slipped only 1.1 per cent to $569,800, and detached homes fell the same 1.1 per cent to $744,300. Semi-detached prices actually rose one per cent to $690,500. The apartment decline was roughly seven times the size of the detached decline.
CREB attributes that gap to supply rather than a collapse in demand. Apartment-style homes carried close to six months of supply in August, the board said, against more than three months for detached homes. Chief economist Ann-Marie Lurie said sales growth in Calgary was concentrated above $1 million, adding that the city has “not seen the same pickup in activity in the lower price ranges, as favourable rental conditions are slowing the transition to ownership.” Cheap rent, in other words, is competing directly with the cheapest thing to buy.
Montreal’s condo market is running the opposite way. QPAREB reported the condominium median rose faster than either single-family homes, up three per cent to $650,000, or plexes, up two per cent to $856,000, making it the strongest of the three categories even as condo sales fell 18 per cent and active listings across the metropolitan area climbed 18 per cent. Condominiums took an average of 62 days to sell, 12 days longer than in August 2025.
That combination, rising prices on falling sales and growing inventory, is the sort of thing that usually precedes a turn. QPAREB assistant director and senior economist Camille Laberge said the condominium segment on the Island of Montreal is the part of the market where rebalancing is furthest along, and that downtown and the Sud-Ouest borough are now posting the highest listing levels ever recorded in the Centris system, with condominium prices in those areas stagnant in recent quarters. Smaller units, she said, are generally proving harder to sell.
Vancouver sits in a third position. There, the apartment decline of 6.6 per cent to $686,200 was actually shallower than the 7.2 per cent drop in the detached benchmark, which fell to $1,799,400. GVR chief economist Andrew Lis said prices have drifted downwards “across all market segments,” and the board’s composite benchmark of $1,081,900 was 5.6 per cent below last August. The apartment sales-to-active-listings ratio of 13.7 per cent was higher than the detached ratio of 9.6 per cent, meaning Vancouver’s condos are turning over faster than its houses even as both lose value.
Toronto’s condo weakness is milder in percentage terms but sits inside a broader slide. TRREB reported an average selling price of $993,410 across all home types, down 2.7 per cent and below $1 million for only the second time this year. Condo apartments averaged $617,593, down 3.6 per cent, and condo sales fell 2.6 per cent while detached and semi-detached sales both edged up.
One caution on the arithmetic. The four boards do not publish the same measure. Calgary and Vancouver report MLS Home Price Index benchmarks, Montreal reports a median, and Toronto reports an average selling price, which is more sensitive to which units happen to sell in a given month. The 12-point spread compares each board’s own headline condo figure, not four identical statistics. The direction of travel is the finding here, not the precise width of the gap.
National figures will not settle it either. The Canadian Real Estate Association’s most recent national release, covering July, put the apartment benchmark at $461,500 within a composite of $661,800 that was down 3.3 per cent year over year. That single number averages a Calgary apartment losing more than eight per cent against a Montreal condo gaining four. Buyers and sellers do not transact in the average.
Sources: Greater Vancouver Realtors, Sept. 1, 2026; Calgary Real Estate Board August 2026 statistics, as reported by The Canadian Press and Real Estate Magazine; QPAREB, Sept. 4, 2026; TRREB August 2026 Market Watch, as reported by The Canadian Press.
