Toronto's Housing Market From 2021 to 2024: A Benchmark Price Review

For anyone who wants to know where the Toronto and GTA housing market has traveled over the past four years, this is worth sitting with. Buying a home or condo is a long-term investment for most people, so stepping back from the monthly and yearly reports to look at a bigger window gives you a much clearer picture.

I'm Moe Asgarian, a Principal Real Estate Broker in Toronto, ranked #47 worldwide at RE/MAX and in the top 1% in Canada. Here I'll walk through official data on both condo and freehold, and we'll see where we started at the beginning of 2021 and where we sit now at the end of 2024.

Why we use the benchmark price

Before the charts, one concept. In this piece I work with the benchmark price. You could use the average price too, but the average leans heavily on how many sales happen. Sales volume in 2024 was about half of 2021, so comparing average prices can drift from reality. To keep the comparison fair, we use the more precise benchmark price. In short, back in 2005 the Toronto Real Estate Board took every urban area, set a baseline of 100 regardless of the standard home price there, and made it the starting point for tracking change. They defined a standard two-story detached freehold as a four-bedroom with an unfinished basement and two bathrooms, looked at what that home sold for that month in that area, and adjusted homes with different features against that standard. Then they compared the change month over month and area to area. That's why the benchmark is the more reliable index, and it lets you see how property values actually shift over time. So we'll compare benchmark prices from 2021 to 2024 on the charts, so sales counts don't distort the data.

Detached homes: a wild ride

Let's start with detached homes in the city of Toronto. In early 2021 the benchmark for a detached home was $1,310,000. In just 15 months it rose 46.7% to $1,910,000 by spring 2022. Then rate hikes cooled things off. We saw another strong run in the first half of 2023, and then in 2024 the market dropped sharply, with some people calling it the worst market in decades. Yes, over these four years the detached benchmark came down 15% from its peak, but compared with early 2021 it's still 25% higher, sitting at $1,600,000. York Region tells nearly the same story. In early 2021 the gap between a detached home in Toronto and York was about $150,000, and that gap has since narrowed. Today an ordinary detached in either Toronto or York runs around $1,600,000. So over four years detached is up about 25% on the benchmark.

Townhouses across Toronto and York

On to townhouses. The swings in Toronto looked like detached homes but were milder. Here the price rose 36% and then fell 14%. An ordinary townhouse now runs around $860,000, about 17% higher than the start of 2021. In York Region we saw a crazy jump at first, with prices going from $700,000 to more than $1 million, a 48% rise. Today a York townhouse is pricier than Toronto's, with roughly a $50,000 gap. So in both Toronto and York, townhouses gained over these years.

Condos: the outlier

Now the condo benchmark. Apartments jumped 40% from 2021 to 2022. After that the chart looked different. Unlike detached and townhouses, which went up and down, condo prices were basically a one-way slide downward, and the reason was the flood of new apartments that hit the market in 2024. Prices came off their peak by about 22%, but compared with 2021 they're still 13% higher. In York, condos rose 50% in 2021 and climbed even higher than the city of Toronto, then followed the same downward path, falling about 24% from their peak. Even here, though, the benchmark is up relative to the start of 2021.

Why the mid and long-term view matters

The point I want to leave you with is the value of a medium and long-term lens. I've said it many times, and here I wanted to remind you with the actual numbers. Yes, the market is in what economists call a recession, days are hard, and many people don't want to invest right now. But even with all of that, someone who invested over these four years did not end up with a bad result. And buying a home is only partly a financial investment. If you buy a home for yourself and your family and live in it, beyond the mortgage benefits and not paying rent, you get a more secure immigration experience and you can invest more calmly in the rest of your life, your social and work relationships. Keep in mind too that interest rates climbed a lot over these four years and were a real barrier to price growth, while in the past few months we've seen rates fall quickly, and that barrier, especially on detached and townhouses, is no longer there. If you would like advice for buying or selling, fill out the form at the bottom of this page or book a free consultation and we'll set up a time to talk. Stay well and take care.