GTA condominiums: “A more complex and uncertain market”

The CN Tower stands past condominiums in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Thursday, May 11, 2017. Toronto home prices climbed 5 percent in April, suggesting the Ontario government's foreign buyer tax and troubles at Home Capital Group Inc. haven't yet cooled the market. Photographer: Cole Burston/Bloomberg  (for Paul Welch Q and A feature on Toronto condos) Photo by Supplied

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Following its 2022 peak, the GTA condo market’s sharp, sustained reset has reshaped the way real estate agents are plying their trade.  

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What was once a multiple-offer environment driven in large part by investor demand has given way to “a more complex and uncertain market,” says Robert Van Rhijn, founder of Strata.ca and broker of record at Toronto-based Strata Realty. “Rising interest rates, shifting buyer sentiment and a surge of new condo inventory have cooled activity and exposed underlying imbalances.”  

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With much of the new inventory comprising units designed primarily for investors — described by Van Rhijn as “micro units with awkward layouts that end users simply don’t want” — brokerages are being forced to adapt to a market that has seen transaction volumes drop from a typical pace of around 90,000 a year to just over 62,000 in 2025, the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) reports. “This has been quite demoralizing for the real-estate industry as a whole,” Van Rhijn says.  

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Here, Van Rhijn discusses how the condo market reset is reshaping operations at Strata and beyond. 

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

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Q What are the biggest challenges your agents are facing right now? 

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A Expectation management is a major challenge on both sides of the transaction. Sellers are often cherry-picking past sales that are no longer applicable, and either don’t understand, or don’t want to accept, what the current market is telling them.  

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 On the buyer side, there’s an overcorrection: Some think we’re in a 2008-style freefall, which we’re absolutely not. They see all this inventory and assume unlimited leverage, but a lot of what’s sitting on the market is what I’d call zombie inventory. It’s not going to sell, and it’s not a reflection of market health. It’s a lot of junk that was sold to investors trying to cash (in). The well-laid-out, functional units in good locations are still selling, often just a hair below list price. 

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 Another issue is that the information environment has gotten much noisier. Between social media influencers and tabloid-style coverage, clients are coming in with a warped sense of where the market actually is.  

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Robert Van Rhijn, founder of Strata.ca and broker of record at Toronto-based Strata Realty. Photo by Supplied

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Q What are you doing to reset expectations?  

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A A big part of what our agents do right now is bridge the gap between perception and reality. That takes patience, data and a willingness to have honest conversations clients don’t always want to hear. We’re spending more time educating clients and walking them through recent transactions so they have a realistic perception of their leverage. 

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“Data-driven” has become a bit of a buzzword in real estate. Everyone claims to use it, but in practice a lot of agents still rely on gut feel and anecdote. Our platform was built by a statistician, and we’ve invested a lot in creating a data interface that lets our agents show clients the evidence behind their advice, not just ask them to take their word for it. 

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The agents who can deliver that are the ones finding the most success in this market. The ones relying on (statements like) “Trust me, I’ve been doing this a long time” are finding that it doesn’t carry the same weight when people’s biggest financial asset is on the line.