The True Monthly Cost of Owning a Toronto Investment Condo (2026 Math)

As of September 2026, a Toronto condo bought at TRREB's average price of about $618,000 with 20 percent down costs roughly $3,950 a month to carry, all lines included. Against the average one-bedroom rent of about $2,275, the cash shortfall is about $1,700. Roughly $950 of that is principal you keep, so the true holding cost is near $750 a month.

I'm Moe Asgarian, and I've been selling and leasing condos in Toronto for more than 15 years. Lately more buyers tick 'buying as an investment' on our own inquiry forms before we've spoken a word. So here is what a calculator won't give you: every monthly line on one page, with September 2026 numbers, and a clean split between the cash you must fund and the money you actually keep. It's a worked example. Swap in your unit's real numbers and it becomes yours.

Start with the honest baseline: price, rate, mortgage

TRREB's August 2026 Market Watch put the average condo apartment price at $617,593. That figure blends every size, from studios to three-bedrooms, so I'll round it to $620,000 and treat it as a plain example unit, not a promise about any one floor plan. Put 20 percent down, $124,000, and you borrow $496,000.

Ratehub lists a 5-year fixed rate of 4.24 percent as the best available this month, with the Bank of Canada's policy rate at 2.25 percent after its September 2 announcement. On a 25-year amortization, that mortgage costs about $2,675 a month. Most calculators stop right here. That's the problem.

Here's how I actually do this before an investor client writes an offer. I pull the building's real maintenance fee from the listing and the status certificate, the unit's real tax bill, and the rents the same building got in the last few months. Then I fill in the lines below with those numbers, not with averages. Do the same with every figure in this post.

The five lines most calculators leave out

Maintenance fee. This line varies most from building to building. Older buildings, and buildings with a pool, concierge and gym, usually run higher. Check whether a deeded parking spot or locker carries its own monthly charge, because those often sit on separate lines in the status certificate.

Property tax. The City of Toronto's total residential rate for 2026 is 0.767311 percent, but it applies to the assessed value, which is often below what you paid. The actual bill in the listing beats any estimate.

Landlord insurance. The building's policy covers the structure, not your unit's contents, your liability as a landlord, or the rent you lose after a flood. You need your own policy.

A vacancy and repair reserve. CMHC's 2025 report puts the Toronto condo vacancy rate at 1.0 percent, so this reserve isn't for months of an empty unit. It's for the gap between tenants, a dishwasher that dies, a fan coil that needs service.

Tenant placement. Finding, screening and signing a good tenant costs money or time, usually both. I wrote about how we do it in How to Find a Good Tenant in Toronto (see /blog/how-to-find-a-good-tenant-in-toronto). Budget for it every lease cycle.

The full monthly model, line by line

Here's the example unit with every line filled in. The mortgage and tax lines come from the sourced figures above. The other four are assumptions, labelled as such. Your unit's real numbers replace them.

Mortgage, principal and interest: $2,675. Maintenance fee: $600 (example). Property tax: about $395, the ceiling if the rate applied to the full purchase price. Landlord insurance: $75 (example). Vacancy and repair reserve: $115 (example, about 5 percent of rent). Tenant placement, spread across the year: $100 (example). Total: about $3,950 a month.

Now the rent. TRREB's Q2 2026 Rental Market Report shows the average one-bedroom condo rent at $2,273. I use the one-bedroom figure on purpose, as the conservative case. If your unit rents for more, the gap narrows. But be honest with yourself: the two-bedroom average is $3,013, and a two-bedroom also costs more to buy and more to carry. Run the same lines rather than assuming the extra rent fills the hole.

Rent in, costs out: the cash shortfall is about $1,700 a month. That's the number you must fund from your own pocket, every month, before anything else happens.

Cash flow versus what you actually keep

So is a $1,700 monthly shortfall a bad investment? Not automatically, and this is where most online arguments go wrong. Of the $2,675 mortgage payment, about $950 a month in the first year goes to principal. That's not a cost. It's forced saving that sits in your equity.

Take the $1,700 shortfall, subtract the $950 of principal, and the true economic cost of holding this condo is about $750 a month, before any change in the unit's value. I unpacked this trade-off in Cash Flow or Capital Gain: Which Is Better for Investing? (see /blog/cash-flow-vs-capital-gain-which-is-better).

My judgement after 15 years of watching investors in this market: keep both numbers in front of you. The $750 tells you whether the deal makes economic sense. The $1,700 tells you whether you can survive it. Rents have softened rather than risen lately, you don't choose when the market hands you a capital gain, and the investors who get hurt are the ones who could afford the $750 story but not the $1,700 reality.

Where the model breaks, and what I tell investors

Three inputs move this result more than anything else. First, the maintenance fee of the specific building. The gap between a lean building and an amenity-heavy older one can swing the monthly number by hundreds. Second, your financing. A bigger down payment or a 30-year amortization lowers the payment, though it changes the principal share too. Third, the rent you assume versus the rent the building has actually achieved.

If you're comparing this to living in the unit yourself, the math is a different animal, and I laid it out in Buying Beats Renting: A Full Cost Breakdown (see /blog/buying-beats-renting-a-full-cost-breakdown). More condo thinking lives on our condos hub (/blog/topics/condos). And ask your accountant which of these lines are deductible against rental income. That's their lane, not mine.

This is the exact model I run for investor clients in Toronto, North York and Willowdale, and the same lines apply in Vaughan, Richmond Hill or Markham with that city's tax rate swapped in. If you're weighing a specific unit, send me the listing and I'll run it on the real fee, the real tax bill and the real comparable rents before you write an offer. Fill out the form at the bottom of the page or book a free consultation. Stay well and take care.