Large City Canadian Condo Owners Struggle to Sell Their Units Delaying Moves to Single-Family Home

Condo owners in Canada’s largest cities like Toronto and Vancouver are ready to pack up and move to new single-family detached homes. The current interest rates are attractive and having a back yard for the kids to play would be a real bonus. The thought is simple use the sales of the condo for a down payment on that new house. The problem . . . they are currently living in condos in older buildings and the older condos are not selling very well. As a plethora of new ones are being built and completed. And why buy old when at these interest rates you can get brand new? Therein lies their dilemma and as they wait for someone to purchase their unit, the price of single-family detached homes continues to rise, and availability continues to shrink. On the downside to all of this is Moody’s Analytics forecasts that Canadian home prices will drop -7% in 2021, with both detached and condos falling. It sees Toronto area prices slipping to early 2017 levels and not fully recovering until mid-2023.