New Home Sales in the GTA Tripled in August

Something happened in the new construction market this summer that deserves more attention than it got.  In August, 692 new single-family homes sold across the GTA.  A year earlier, that number was 215.  Sales have more than tripled from last year's historic low, and August came in 47 per cent above the ten-year average, according to figures prepared by Altus Group for BILD, the Building Industry and Land Development Association, and reported in the Toronto Star on September 22.

The HST Rebate Is the Reason

Numbers like that don't move on their own.  The push is coming from the HST rebate on new homes that the federal and provincial governments brought in this past April.  It's a one-year program, and it was designed as a lifeline for a building industry that had spent two years stuck between a backlog of unsold supply and a stubborn price gap between new homes and resale.  BILD reports five straight months of rising low-rise sales since the rebate arrived, and year-to-date single-family sales now sit at 5,550 - more than double last year's record low, and roughly in line with the ten-year average.

To understand why it's working, remember where new construction was sitting.  From the 2022 peak to the end of last year, new single-family prices had already fallen about 25 per cent, and even then almost nothing was moving.  The rebate closed enough of the remaining gap to get buyers signing again.  The benchmark price for a new single-family home was $1.25 million in August, down 14.6 per cent from a year earlier - and that's the gross price, before the rebate comes off.

Builders are responding in a particular way: townhomes.  Across the GTA, townhomes are taking a much larger share of single-family sales than the historical pattern would suggest, because builders are pricing them to make the most of the rebate.  We see it around here as well.  The townhome sites in Cornell and up through Victoria Square are exactly the kind of product this program was built to move.

Condos are a different story.  There were 215 new condo sales in the GTA in August.  That's double a year ago, but still 78 per cent below the ten-year average, and a long way from the 3,149 units that sold in August of 2021.  The rebate hasn't done much for condos because the program's rules around construction start and completion dates make it hard for most projects to qualify.  If you've been reading about trouble in the condo market, this is another chapter of the same book.

And before anyone declares a boom, one more number matters.  At the current pace of sales, it would take 38.5 months to clear everything builders have on the market.  A healthy market clears in nine to twelve.  Buyers still hold the stronger hand, and they will for a while yet.

So what do I take from all of this?  If you looked at new construction two or three years ago and walked away because the sticker made no sense next to resale, the arithmetic has changed.  Prices are down meaningfully from the peak, the rebate comes off the top, builders are motivated, and there is more finished and nearly finished inventory to choose from than I can remember seeing in a long time in this business.  The rebate runs for one year, which puts a quiet clock on the whole thing.

It matters on the selling side too.  Every sharply priced new townhome is competition for a resale one, and pricing a listing this fall without accounting for that is leaving the job half done.

If a new build has been somewhere in the back of your mind, this is a sensible season to look again.  Send me a note about any project you're curious about and we'll go through the real numbers together, rebate and all.

What Ontario's HST Rebate on New Homes Means for Markham Sellers This Fall

If you are planning to sell a detached home or a freehold townhouse in Markham this fall, the thing that has changed most is not the interest rate, it is who you are competing against.  Ontario's expanded HST rebate applies only to newly built homes, and over the summer it has pulled a meaningful share of buyers toward builder inventory, with single-family new home sales across the GTA finishing July up 246% over the same month a year ago.  What follows is what that shift does to your pricing and your marketing, and where an established Markham home still holds a real advantage.

The July numbers, and why they are unusual

Builders sold 1,018 new homes across the GTA in July, and 781 of those were single-family: detached, semi-detached, linked and townhomes.  That puts the single-family category roughly 50% above its ten-year July average, which is a genuinely unusual reading in a market most people still describe as slow.  At the same time, the benchmark price on those new single-family homes was $1,362,433, down 8.5% from a year ago, while new condominium apartments sold 80% below their ten-year average (source: BILD and Altus Group new home sales release for July 2026, published August 27).

I read those two facts as one story rather than two.  Builders have been discounting, the rebate stacks on top of the discount, and buyers who spent the last two years waiting have decided that the combination is finally worth acting on.  Dave Wilkes at BILD described it as the fourth consecutive month of positive momentum in the single-family category, and the pattern in the numbers supports him.

The part that catches resale sellers off guard

The rebate does not apply to a resale home.  When a buyer sits down and compares your house in Markham Village, Unionville or Cornell against a new release a few minutes up the road, they are weighing your asking price against a builder's price less a rebate that can reach well into five or six figures, and that arithmetic can look unflattering if you have anchored your expectations to what a neighbour achieved in a different market.  I would far rather you hear this from me in early September than work it out for yourself in late October, after a month of polite showings and no offers.

This is not a reason to be discouraged, and it is certainly not a reason to give the house away.  It is a reason to price and present against what is actually on the market right now instead of against memory.

Mature Tree Lined Street in Markham

Where an established Markham home still wins

A new build is a floor plan and a rendering, and for a lot of buyers that is exactly the appeal.  But an established home in Unionville, Markham Village, Berczy, Wismer, Swan Lake or Cornell offers a set of things a builder simply cannot put in a brochure: mature trees and finished landscaping that would take fifteen years to grow in, a school assignment that is settled today rather than promised, a closing date you can actually plan a move around, and no development charge adjustments or occupancy delays waiting at the end of the process.  There is also no HST on the purchase price of a resale home, which is worth saying plainly to any buyer who has been doing the builder math and has not thought it through.

When I take a listing in one of these neighbourhoods, that is the conversation I want the marketing to be having.  Photograph the mature canopy, the established gardens, the finished basement that a new owner would otherwise spend a year and a great deal of money creating.  Sell the fifteen years the buyer does not have to wait.

How I would price into this market

Markham itself is holding up better than the headlines suggest.  There were 288 sales here in July at an average price of $1,131,324 and a median of $1,062,500, with a sales-to-new-listings ratio of 39.4%, the tightest in York Region, and roughly 4.2 months of inventory.  Across York Region as a whole, new listings were down 18.7% from a year ago (source: TRREB Market Watch, July 2026).  Fewer sellers came to market this summer, which means a well-prepared, sensibly priced home is facing less resale competition than it would have faced last fall, even with the builders active.

So the strategy is not complicated.  Price against the last ninety days of sales on streets genuinely comparable to yours, not against a builder's list price and not against 2022.  Prepare the home properly before it goes live rather than after.  And get out in front of the fall traffic, because the Bank of Canada announces its next rate decision on Wednesday, September 2, and the buyers who have been waiting on that news will be looking the following weekend.

The Buyer’s Advantage

The HST rebate has given builders an advantage on price that a resale seller cannot match dollar for dollar, so do not try to.  Compete instead on the things an established Markham neighbourhood already owns: mature setting, certainty, and a closing you can plan around, priced honestly against the last ninety days.  If you are thinking about a fall sale, I am glad to walk through your home, tell you candidly what is worth doing and what is not, and put real local numbers behind the pricing conversation.

Brad