New home sales remained at an all-time low in the Greater Toronto Area in January 2026, according to a report by Altus Group.
The report shows the 269 new homes sold in January, down 36 per cent from the previous year and 80 per cent below the 10-year average.
Joel Scopelleti, partner at Carick Home Improvements, said the biggest change is that people are not buying houses.
He said people usually renovate before moving in and since they’re not buying houses, builders are losing two markets.
“On one end, we’re not getting that new home person renovating, and you’re also not getting that person renovating to sell the house,” Scopelleti said.
The average price for new single-family homes in January in the GTA was $1,397,358, which was down 10 per cent over the last 12 months, according to the report.
“Another issue is the cost of houses,” Scopelleti said.
“If you bought a house and now it’s worth less than what you paid for it, you really don’t want to invest more money into that house,” he said.
Stacked townhouses and condos made up 85 units sold in the GTA in January, 50 per cent less than the previous year and 89 per cent down from the 10-year average, according to the report.
Angelo Carnevale president and project manager of CCS Construction Group Inc. said factors contributing to new home sales in the GTA remaining at record lows is “red tape, government regulations, land transfer fees too high, builders that have to pay all the tariffs to the cities, it’s crazy,”
The average price for new condo apartments in January in the GTA was $1,027,486, according to the report.
Carnevale said if not for red tape, “prices would be lower, average per door in a condominium right now, I think it’s $250,000 of costs to the building,”
“Which is a lot of money, so they cut back on all the extra costs of the builders and the taxes, and the red tape that slows everything down, so the governments created this problem,” he said.
The 184 single-family home sales in the GTA, including detached, linked, and semi-detached house sales in January were down 26 per cent from the previous year and 68 per cent less than the 10-year average, according to the report.
“The problem that’s been created by the government is you want to build a subdivision, it takes seven years to get that through, so the plan is we’re going to sell these houses at $500,000, seven years go down and that $500,000 is not viable anymore,” Carnevale said.
“As soon as they put the houses ready for sale, the demand is there because there’s not enough housing, so they create it, and obviously, all the builders are wanting to get rich, greedy, they want to make money,” he said.
“The government made them rich and greedy because the government could tell the red tape and the bureaucrats put all this red tape out there that they can’t build fast enough, so every time they build 100 houses, there’s 300 that want to buy them,” Carnevale said.
“The prices have to go up and that’s the problem," he said.
"If they would let all that stuff go away, get rid of all the bureaucracy and the red tape away from the builders and say you can put the shovel in the ground tomorrow, they start building quicker," Carnevale said.
Carnevale said the biggest problem has been governments getting involved and the bureaucracy pushes prices up.
“It's already too late, and this should have been a problem that should have been solved 20 years ago,” Carnevale said.
He said that governments should phase out of the business, allowing builders to build.
"That would keep prices down," Carnevale said.
New home inventory remaining in the GTA in January was 20,557, including 14,731 condo units as well as 5,826 single-family homes, according to the report.
This represents the highest inventory level seen to date, combining inventory of 26 months, based on average sales over the last 12 months, according to the report.
Ernesto Arduini of Ridgestone Homes LTD said pre-Trump many people were looking to stay put because of the rising cost of real estate.
“Since Trump has gotten into power, I think the concern has been more the economic uncertainty, it’s unknown right now, it’s still too fresh and I think there’s a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace where we’re looking for,” Arduini said.
“We have the trade agreement with the U.S. up in the air, we have Trump that’s imposed all kinds of tariffs on aluminum, on software, and that’s impacted a big chunk of our working force,” Arduini said.
