That means the buyer cohort that fuelled an enormous amount of activity in the condo market in the days of record-low interest rates during the COVID-19 pandemic – real estate investors – is now almost completely absent from the sector.
It’s creating some opportunities for buyers who were priced out of the market before, according to Khaneka. “One person’s misery creates opportunity on the other side. So there are people who aren’t able to get into the townhouses or bigger homes that are able to pick up a condo at a much cheaper price than they have been,” he said.
Still, that trend hasn’t been enough to arrest the market’s slide. One of the main reasons things are still frosty in the condo market, according to the Bank of Canada: there may be an oversupply of units, but many of those are simply too small for end users to view as a viable place to live.
A big problem for Toronto: Nobody wants to live in a micro condo
A recent report by the central bank highlighted that the net number of new arrivals to Canada plunged between 2023 and 2025, drying up rental demand and making smaller units a much less attractive proposition for investors.
The result is a glut of tiny, unlivable units in the city, with the BoC noting a “sizable mismatch between supply and demand” in Toronto. Put simply: catering mainly to investors who didn’t care about the livability of the condos they rented out was a disastrous policy that’s now come back to bite the market.