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Pickering condo prices have crashed by 57 per cent since February 2022. Vaughan, Markham and Milton have also seen worse losses than the city of <\/p>\n
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Pickering condo prices have crashed by 57 per cent since February 2022. Vaughan, Markham and Milton have also seen worse losses than the city of <\/p>\n Unlike Toronto, where tiny condos in tall towers have been the centre of the housing market crash, in Brampton the homes have been bigger and the price drops often more dramatic.<\/p>\n Some of them were bought by local investors as second or third properties. Other buyers purchased homes with basement apartments that allowed them to take on bigger mortgages. In both cases, buyers were\u00a0counting on rental income\u00a0local real estate professionals say.<\/p>\n But new restrictions on international students and temporary foreign workers\u00a0have made it harder to attract tenants to help with mortgage payments. This, combined with big price drops and higher interest rates, have turned what was once seen as a path to\u00a0success into something much more precarious.<\/p>\n While there\u2019s a silver lining in more affordable homes for younger residents, others are losing big.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people were using their homes as ATMs, they were living beyond their means,\u201d said Brampton mortgage broker Rakhi Madan. \u201cOver the last 10 years, things were on their side, the prices were going up so dramatically,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n \u201cThat party is over now.\u201d<\/p>\n Power of sales happen when owners miss mortgage payments and the lender takes over to get what they are owed back. The owner technically gets any profit after the sale, but often these days there\u2019s not much left,\u00a0said Jonathan Alphonso, a GTA realtor and mortgage broker.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to track power of sales, although there are often clues, like an empty home because the owners have already been evicted for defaulting on loans. These properties are sold \u201cas is\u201d\u00a0\u2014 the lender makes no promises about the condition.<\/p>\n Alphonso recently created a website that scrapes real estate listings looking for the term \u201cpower of sale,\u201d and found that\u00a0Brampton<\/a>\u00a0has the most active residential listings of any city in Ontario (32), second only to Toronto (97), as of press time. That\u2019s still a small percentage of overall listings,\u00a0but a jump<\/a>\u00a0from 2024. In May 2024, only two power of sale listings came on the market\u00a0in Brampton, compared to 15 in April 2026.<\/p>\n \u201cBrampton is giving us a lot of headaches,\u201d\u00a0Alphonso said, adding it\u2019s mostly houses that he\u00a0is seeing in power of sale there, and not condos. They impact the entire market, setting new bottoms because they are \u201calmost always the lowest price sold in the neighbourhood.\u201d<\/p>\n But just a few years ago, the city was seeing huge jumps in home prices and real estate seemed like a sure bet.<\/p>\n Prices steadily climbed, rising almost 32 per cent to about $1.35 million from February 2021 to February 2022, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board<\/a>\u00a0(TRREB).<\/p>\n Gurpartap Singh Toor,\u00a0a regional councillor for both the city of Brampton and the region of Peel, said many residents \u201cbought into this idea of owning a home, and that true success means that you can own a second property,\u201d or even a third.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the interest rates were really low, that became everybody\u2019s prime opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n Madan remembers doing mortgages for 0.99 per cent. Buyers thought the good times were never going to end.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were renovating. People were buying houses, people were refinancing, people were buying new cars,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was free money.\u201d<\/p>\n Any property went fast, with multiple offers, remembers\u00a0Laddi Dhillon, a sales representative with RE\/MAX Gold Realty Inc. Purchasers were \u201clining up\u201d and didn\u2019t care about price. \u201cThey wanted to get the house.\u201d<\/p>\n But in spring 2022, the Bank of Canada began a series of interest rate increases. Big price drops followed.<\/p>\n Madan\u00a0said in Brampton a more intense version of what\u2019s unfolding across the GTA is happening. Average prices in the region have dropped by 24 per cent since the February 2022 peak, according to numbers from TRREB<\/a>, while\u00a0in\u00a0Brampton, they\u2019ve fallen 34 per cent over the same period, to $892,000.<\/p>\n Many mortgages done during the pandemic at very low interest rates are now coming up for renewal at higher ones, Toor said. Monthly payments are higher, rental income is lower, and it\u2019s resulting in a lack of investor confidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNow everyone\u2019s wondering, can I carry the second property anymore?\u201d<\/p>\n Data shows some residents are falling behind on their mortgage payments, even if they are able to hold on to their homes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brampton average home prices rose almost 32 per cent from February 2021 to February 2022, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board.<\/p>\n R.J. Johnston\/Toronto Star<\/p>\n In the last quarter of 2025, 0.85 per cent of all open mortgages in Brampton were severely delinquent (missed mortgage payments for 90 days or more), that\u2019s up from 0.41 per cent in the final quarter of 2019, and above the Ontario (0.63 per cent) and Canadian (0.62 per cent) averages, as a percentage of the total volume of open mortgages, according to consumer credit reporting agency\u00a0Equifax Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n This has all resulted in some big losses for homeowners who need to sell, even if they\u2019re not forced to by a lender.\u00a0<\/p>\n One Brampton\u00a0detached home<\/a>\u00a0with a basement apartment sold for $900,000 last fall, a $750,000 loss from the $1.65 million it got in 2021, according to real estate company\u00a0HouseSigma.<\/a><\/p>\n And some owners are just not able to hold on to their homes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dhillon said he\u2019s seen a lot more power of sales in the last year, the majority owned by people who bought near the top \u2014\u00a02021 and early 2022\u00a0\u2014\u00a0some of whom were renting out basements to make their mortgage payments.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey did not have the means to buy it, but they took loans, like lines of credit and refinanced their previous property, \u201d he said. \u201cBut now the market has crashed, and they have nowhere to go, so the properties are going back to the lenders.\u201d<\/p>\n A lot of families in the city are impacted by the ongoing tariffs with the U.S., whether they\u2019re in the trucking industry or self-employed, Madan said. As well, some residents bought pre-construction properties (both condos and freehold homes) before they were built and those are now worth less than what they agreed to purchase them for and they are not able to close.<\/p>\n \u201cThey spread themselves too thin,\u201d she said, adding she also saw \u201cpeople trying to use a basement apartment as leverage to get bigger mortgages.\u201d<\/p>\n Average prices in the GTA have dropped by 24 per cent since the February 2022 peak, while in Brampton, they\u2019ve fallen 34 per cent over the same period, according to data from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board.<\/p>\n R.J. Johnston\/Toronto Star<\/p>\n Toor, who came to Canada as an immigrant to attend university, said reports of 10 or 15 international students crowded into a basement were based on stereotypes and \u201csuper exaggerated.\u201d<\/p>\n But, he said, \u201ca lot of the rental housing was being supported by either temporary foreign workers or international students.\u201d Now that the government is permitting fewer people<\/a> under those programs,\u00a0\u201cthe rental pricing is also declining.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Statistics Canada,<\/a> the city\u2019s total population grew from 2021 to 2024 by around 96,000 but then declined by almost 6,000 people from 2024 to 2025, these numbers include both\u00a0work permit holders and study permit holders with valid permits when the data was collected.\u00a0It now sits at just under 780,000.<\/p>\n The city\u2019s new Residential Rental Licensing (RRL) Program requires homeowners renting one to four residential units to get a licence. Starting in January 2026, landlords\u00a0also have to provide proof of insurance and complete an educational program.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
In Milton, the downturn has led to an increase in food bank use and owners building basement suites to hold on to their home.<\/p>\n
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