Toronto and Vancouver October home sales fall as sellers pull back faster than buyers

Home sales fell in both Toronto and Vancouver in October, but sellers retreated even faster than buyers, according to figures released this week by the two cities’ real estate boards.

The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) reported 5,603 sales through its MLS system in October, down 7.9 per cent from October 2025. The Greater Vancouver REALTORS (GVR) reported 2,024 sales, down 10.2 per cent from the 2,255 recorded a year earlier.

Side by side, the two releases show a pattern that neither board’s headline spells out: new listings fell by almost the same margin in both cities, and by more than sales did in Toronto.

Listings fell faster than sales

TRREB said new listings totalled 14,173 in October, down 11.9 per cent from a year earlier. GVR counted 4,805 new listings, down 11.6 per cent from the 5,438 listed in October 2025.

Using those published figures, The Canada News Media calculated the ratio of sales to new listings. In Toronto it works out to about 39.5 per cent this October, compared with roughly 37.8 per cent a year earlier, a back-calculation from TRREB’s rounded percentage changes. In Vancouver it is about 42.1 per cent, up from about 41.5 per cent in October 2025. In both cities, in other words, owners pulled listings off the market at a slightly faster clip than buyers pulled out.

The ratio is not a figure either board publishes, and it is a crude measure. It does suggest the price declines below are happening without a flood of new supply.

Prices still sliding

TRREB reported the MLS Home Price Index composite benchmark was down 4.3 per cent year over year in October. The board put the average selling price at $1,024,108, down 2.7 per cent. The average and the index measure different things: the average shifts with the mix of homes that sell, while the index tracks a standardized typical home.

GVR’s composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Greater Vancouver was $1,068,600, a 5.2 per cent decrease from October 2025 and 0.7 per cent lower than in September. By property type, GVR reported benchmark prices of $1,775,200 for detached homes (down 7.0 per cent year over year), $1,006,500 for townhouses (down 5.5 per cent) and $673,400 for apartments (down 5.9 per cent).

Because TRREB’s headline price is an average and GVR’s is a benchmark, the cleanest like-for-like comparison is the index figures: down 4.3 per cent in Toronto’s MLS HPI composite and down 5.2 per cent in Vancouver’s composite benchmark.

Vancouver’s inventory cushion

Vancouver has more room for prices to soften than Toronto’s release shows. GVR said sales were 22.5 per cent below the 10-year seasonal average of 2,612, while active listings stood at 15,688, down 4.3 per cent from a year ago but 24 per cent above the 10-year seasonal average of 12,649.

The board’s sales-to-active-listings ratio was 13.4 per cent across all property types: 11.6 per cent for detached homes, 16.5 per cent for attached and 13.5 per cent for apartments. GVR says downward price pressure tends to occur when the ratio stays below 12 per cent for a sustained period, and upward pressure when it exceeds 20 per cent over several months. Detached homes are the only segment under the 12 per cent line.

TRREB’s release did not include active listings or days on market, and a full report was linked as a separate PDF.

What the boards are saying

TRREB president Daniel Steinfeld said that if a Canada-U.S. trade deal is reached, “GTA residents could gain a clearer picture of the economic outlook.” Jason Mercer, TRREB’s chief information officer, said “GTA homebuyers continued to benefit from substantial negotiating power on price over the past year.” TRREB attributed the month’s results to inflation and borrowing costs.

TRREB also said that on a seasonally adjusted basis, October sales and new listings were up from September, and that the price index edged up month over month on that basis. That makes the year-over-year declines look less like a fresh slide than a market still sitting below last fall’s levels.

Andrew Lis, GVR’s chief economist and vice-president of data analytics, said in the board’s release that October “came with a few suspenseful distractions for buyers and sellers alike.”

What to watch

The Canadian Real Estate Association is expected to publish national October figures in mid-November, and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s October housing starts follow around the same time. Those will show whether the Toronto and Vancouver pattern, fewer listings and softer prices, is repeated across the country.

Sources: TRREB October 2026 market release (Nov. 4); Greater Vancouver REALTORS October 2026 statistics package (Nov. 2). Sales-to-new-listings ratios are calculations by The Canada News Media from those figures.

Photo credits: all images are illustrative stock photography from Unsplash (featured image: Farnaz Kohankhaki, Toronto row houses). None shows a property or neighbourhood discussed in the board data.