Regina detached home prices rose 13 per cent per square foot in the first half of 2026, the sharpest gain of any Canadian city, even as Toronto and Ottawa recorded some of the steepest declines in the country, according to Century 21 Canada’s ninth annual Price Per Square Foot Survey.
The survey, released July 27 and based on Canadian Real Estate Association MLS data along with figures compiled by Century 21 franchisees, compared home sales from Jan. 1 to June 30, 2026, against the same period in 2025 across 50 communities nationwide. It found Regina detached homes climbed to $337 per square foot this year from $298 in 2025. Ottawa detached homes fell to $639 per square foot from $741, a drop of nearly 14 per cent, while Toronto’s downtown condo market fell almost eight per cent, to $650 per square foot from $705.
The divergence extends beyond price to construction itself. CMHC’s August 2026 housing starts report, released Sept. 16, found building activity fell in most provinces but rose modestly in Quebec and Alberta, with the steepest declines concentrated in Ontario. “Housing starts continued to trend slightly down in August, as modest gains in Quebec and Alberta only partially offset the decline in other provinces, most notably, Ontario,” said Kevin Hughes, CMHC’s deputy chief economist. The national seasonally adjusted annual rate held essentially flat at 229,046 units, but actual urban starts fell two per cent year over year, to 17,691 units from 18,112 in August 2025.
Ontario’s price declines were broad based in the Century 21 survey, not confined to Toronto and Ottawa. Guelph, Newmarket, Richmond Hill, Vaughan and St. Catharines all recorded per-square-foot declines in the mid to high single digits or more. “While overall the real estate market has been soft this year, 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, Century 21 Canada’s executive vice-president.
Quebec and the Prairies told a different story. Montreal detached homes rose nearly six per cent, to $553 per square foot from $523, the survey found, even as Montreal condo prices slipped slightly, a dip Century 21 said was the first in the nine years it has run the survey. In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Saskatoon detached homes rose five per cent, to $397 from $377, and Brandon gained nearly 10 per cent, to $328 from $299. Alberta was comparatively flat: Calgary detached homes slipped two per cent, to $464 from $474, while Edmonton edged up less than one per cent, to $344 from $341.
“We’ve really settled into a balanced market,” said Geneva Tetrault, owner of Century 21 Masters in Edmonton. “There are people who might need a bigger house, who might want to downsize, who are experiencing changes in their families. They will always make up a base of need-oriented transactions.”
British Columbia recorded some of the steepest declines outside Ontario. Vancouver’s downtown condo market fell almost 15 per cent, to $1,026 per square foot from $1,206, while detached homes in the city fell to $933 from $998. Richmond, North Vancouver and White Rock detached homes each fell roughly 10 to 12 per cent. Rhiannon Foster, an agent with Century 21 In-Town Realty in Vancouver, said buyers who waited out the downturn now have leverage they have not had in years. “For buyers that have been waiting, this might be the best environment for them. They have choice, they have time to make decisions, they have negotiating power that hasn’t been possible in a very long time,” she said.
Yet CMHC’s six-month construction data shows Vancouver-area starts rose six per cent even as prices fell, a trend the agency attributed to multi-unit projects, while Toronto’s construction trend was flat. Builders in Vancouver, in other words, kept adding supply through a period of falling prices, a pattern not seen in Ontario, where both construction and prices retreated together over the same six months.
