Ep. 52 - Market on Hold? What Happens When Toronto Goes on Vacation

In this episode of The Last Honest Realtor, David Fleming strips away the summer optimism and asks the question on every homeowner’s mind: when Toronto heads for the cottage, does the real estate market grind to a halt?

With data-driven analysis and candid field stories, David unpacks the seasonal myths and inconvenient truths behind sluggish sales, desperate price cuts, and the rush of sellers hoping the fall will “save” their year. If you’re expecting a summer lull, brace yourself—this year, it’s more than just the temperature that’s set to drop.

In This Episode:

• The reality behind Toronto’s summer market slow-down—and why it’s worse than usual in 2025
• Why buyers, sellers, and agents all pin their hopes on the fall, despite the numbers
• The surge of latecomers listing in June, and what it reveals about seller psychology
• How market fatigue is fueling a record number of relistings and terminated listings
• What absorption rates and sales volumes actually say about condo and freehold demand
• Why the rental market is bucking its own seasonal trends—and what it means for investors
• Interest rate cuts: what to expect, and why predictions rarely pan out as planned
• Lessons from the data: market troughs, false optimism, and how to make decisions in a buyer-seller standoff

Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro: Toronto real estate meets vacation season
02:00 – Summer market myths vs. 2025 reality
05:00 – The June seller rush: who lists, and why
09:00 – Sluggish sales and the cold, hard numbers
14:00 – The relisting spiral: inside the cycle of failed listings
18:00 – Why sellers are betting on the fall (and why that rarely works)
22:00 – Condos, rentals, and the decline of the “hot” summer market
28:00 – Predictions, data, and the path forward for buyers and sellers
33:00 – Closing thoughts: decision-making in a market on pause

Subscribe, comment, and share this episode with anyone banking on a summer sale—or expecting the market to do their heavy lifting.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro: Toronto real estate meets vacation season
• 2:00 Summer market myths vs. 2025 reality
• 5:00 The June seller rush: who lists, and why
• 9:00 Sluggish sales and the cold, hard numbers
• 14:00 The relisting spiral: inside the cycle of failed listings
• 18:00 Why sellers are betting on the fall (and why that rarely works)
• 22:00 Condos, rentals, and the decline of the “hot” summer market
• 28:00 Predictions, data, and the path forward for buyers and sellers
• 33:00 Closing thoughts: decision-making in a market on pause

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

It's officially summer and you are going on vacation, but is the Toronto real estate market going along with you? Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Last Honest Realtor podcast. I'm your host, David Fleming. Thank you for joining me today on this absolutely sweltering day. We usually film a week in advance, so by the time you watch this, maybe it will have cooled down to 31. It is wild outside right now, and for those of us whose air conditioners stopped working last night, it's been a tough one. But seriously though, we're in summer, and a lot of questions need to be asked about what a summer real estate market looks like. Now today, I wanna talk about the summer market, and I want to talk about predictions or at the very least discussion points, because I noticed that people really like predictions. They like to talk about the future. I've seen an uptick in traffic on the videos that I've done anytime we talk about what to look out for or what's ahead. So not to say that that's why we're doing it, but I'd also be remiss if I didn't add that in the month of May on Toronto Realty Blog, my stats post was called past, present or future. And basically I theorized that there are three different types of real estate participants or enthusiasts, if you will, there are those that are always looking ahead. They always want to know what the market is doing for whatever reason. Is it because they're thinking about making a move? Is it the opposite? They're incredibly nervous. Then there are those that are always looking back. And so for some of those people, yeah, it's looking back with regret. I should have bought. What was I thinking? Or it's looking back at moves they made or moves that they didn't. For whatever reason, they are fixated on past prices. And then there are those that are living in the present. And believe it or not, I would say that that represents the smallest group of the three. Now, when I wrote this blog last month, I was simply talking about the May Treb stats, but essentially saying that where we are in the market right now, you can, of course, choose to look back. Oh my gosh, 2022, that was the peak. I can't believe how far we've fallen. Or you could look forward. We're in a dip right now and prices are going to go up eventually. They do. You could look forward to interest rate cuts. Or you could look forward to doom and gloom. There's wars going on, Trump, tariffs, taxes, the three things. Isn't that over? That was so February. So then, of course, you can choose to look in the present. And we've done a lot of that on The Last Honest Realtor in a little while. Today, I want to talk about predictions for the summer. Now, prediction number one, it's going to be hot. I just decided I wanted to get ahead. I wanted to put a prediction in there that we know... is going to come to fruition. It is 36 degrees. And I mentioned that we had the AC fail last night. It didn't completely fail. It was 81 degrees. That's very hot. Some of you work in Celsius. I don't know how to change the thermostat. Suffice it to say, the family slept in the basement. My wife and kids slept on the big sectional couch in the TV room. And because, I don't know, I guess I'm selfish, I slept in the bed in the basement bedroom. That was nice. Although 81, that was a lot. Now we also, last weekend, On that really hot Sunday, we had a blackout in our area. I was outside vacuuming leaves, as one does, and all of a sudden the vacuum cut out and then my son came running outside and he said, Daddy, we have a huge problem. I said, what is it? He said, the TV turned off. And I realized that it was a blackout and not just the fuse breaker tripped from me vacuuming outside. So it's been an interesting start. June 21st, that's the first day of summer. We're in summer. I cannot believe we're in summer. We're done spring. Yeah, David, that's how the calendar works. But it's fascinating to me because the spring market, as I've always said, is January through the end of June, which is very silly because that actually goes from winter to spring to summer. But what that means, put this all together, David's stories about blackouts and hot weather, is that it's the summer market and it's going to be hot. And I think that a lot of people are going to want to get out of here. It's gonna be kind of like, remember in COVID, everyone was leaving, and then we reached maybe in 2024, maybe even 2023, I think fewer people were leaving the city. I think this year is gonna be a get the F out of Dodge type of summer. Now, what does that mean for the real estate market? I mean, not everybody is leaving. I'm a homebody. I mentioned on Sunday what I was actually doing outside. I set up an American Ninja Warrior course for my son. You can go online. It's 200 bucks. You get the strap and all of the... Pulleys and monkey bars and stuff like that. I had to have Chris come over and help. It was a real two-man job. But I'm doing that because, yeah, I'm Dougie and I'm going to be here. I'm working. We've got a lot happening. But that's me and that's real estate. And that certainly does not represent all of the agents or all of the buyers or the sellers. So I do believe people are going to leave the city in droves. It's going to be a slow summer market. But let's move on to real predictions. Prediction number two. People are going to rush to market in June. Now, by the time you watch this, it'll probably be July, but point being, I was out with clients last night looking at a place in Forest Hill-ish, right, just on the east side of Bathurst, let's say, and they remarked, in addition to this house being listed at this time, which is a little bit odd and a little bit late, they said that in their area where nothing ever comes up for sale, not one, but two properties were listed this week alone. And they said to me, looking for the so-called expert opinion, why would someone list a house of that stature in that price point, appealing to that particular demographic, now? It's a good question. So my note here says people are rushing to market in June. Let me turn that around and say people were late to market for April or May. So I think that all of the folks that are listing right now Look, if you decided at Christmas or New Year's, you're gonna be a seller in 2025, did you circle June 27th on your calendar? That's actually my sister's birthday. I gotta send flowers. And today's my friend Ryan's birthday. Damn it, damn it, you gotta text him. So would you target the 27th of June? I don't think so, but there's a lot of folks that are listening right now. As I said, I think that there are two groups. One are the people that are incredibly late, and two, are the people that are incredibly early. So if you think that the market is going to slow down, and you decide that you don't wanna wait until the fall market, post-Labor Day, and we'll come back to that in a few points, you might decide to list right now. The summer market can be slow, and I'm talking for freehold, okay? The condo market is what it is, but the freehold market generally works around the school calendar, and not everyone has kids, not everyone is having them, not everyone has a home with three children in it, and as soon as school finishes, they summer in Italy. They use summer as a verb. Ah, we were summering with the Johnsons. You know those people? Except it's probably not the Johnsons, it's probably like the Van Smyth, the Thirds. They like to use the word summer. But they also use the word plate as a verb. You know, people that take pictures of food. Well, and they've plated it very nicely. The point is, a lot of folks are gonna be summering, and the freehold market does work around that calendar. So why in the world would you take a$4 million house in Cedarvale and list it right now? Well, I don't know. Maybe these folks are just late or maybe they're exceptionally early. Now, I think it's a risk-reward situation. If you have, and this kind of goes with that whole theory of don't list a property before May 2-4 weekend or before Canada Day weekend because everyone's away on that weekend and your buyer pool is reduced, some contrarian views are that, well, you have fewer competition, less competition, let's say. So yeah, I could probably list the following week and have more buyers, but I'm gonna be competing against a lot more stuff. So again, I don't share that view. I would not list before a long weekend and then have an offer date after that long weekend because so many people are gonna miss it. But maybe along those lines, some folks are thinking, hey, if I've got this really great$3 million house in Davisville Village, maybe I'll list it right now because there's not a lot of competition. The buyer pool, a lot of them are away. A lot of them are summering. But a lot of them are here. And if you have less competition, and for those folks that have maybe missed out in April, May, and June, perhaps that's not a terrible idea. So an overshare here. I lost in competition on a$3.2 million house last Friday. That hurt. Yeah, yeah. Wasn't meant to be, as they say. But for those particular folks, they are active. They will buy in June. They will buy in July. They will buy in August. There's nothing about their timing except maybe if one of them was away, but you know what? I'm doing a showing with them tomorrow night. One of them's here. One of them's going to be on Zoom because he's traveling in Europe for work. So hey, those folks are buying. So my third point, second being people are rushing to market in June. My third point is sales will be sluggish. Absolutely. I want to review sales with you for the last year. This year, let's say. For those that like numbers, you're welcome in advance. For those that absolutely don't, Hey, you know what? Just picture something fun in your head for about the next 45 seconds. In January, we saw the third lowest sales of all time. Now, I'm saying in the month of January, and I'm also saying all time, 2002 onward, because that is when I track statistics from. It's a long story, but the city was way too small pre-2000 to start looking at comparative purposes. So the highest number in January is 6,928. So our 3847 offhand, I'd say we're about 40% down from the peak. Now in February, We saw the lowest sales in any February of all time, 4,037. Now, for reference, 2024 was 5,607. 4,000 sales down from 5,600. Now, in March, we also saw the lowest of all time. So if you're playing along, January had the third lowest, February had the lowest, March has the lowest. Now, 5,011 sales. The second lowest, 6,171. That is not even close. And in 2024... which was the third lowest ever, we saw 6,560 sales. So that goes along with February. We're dropping off massively. Now, April was the lowest of all time if you eliminate 2020, which was COVID, which you kind of have to eliminate. Now, 5,601 sales. I noted here the second lowest was last year in 2024, 7,114 sales. That's a 21% decline. Now, in the month of May... We also saw the lowest sales of all time, minus COVID once again, 6,244 sales. Now, the second lowest happened to be 2024, but it was still 7,000 sales. Now, down 11%. So it's only down 11%. The year before was down 21%. Could we put a positive spin on that? If we wanted to, which I'm not going to try to do. Folks, as I said, hopefully you didn't tune out all those numbers. We saw... in May, April, March, and February, the lowest sales in those respective months of all time. So as I said, my third point sales will be sluggish. I mean, I'm not really going out on a limb here, am I? Now, by the time you watch this video, perhaps the June data will be out. I would hazard a guess that we will also see June as the lowest sales in any month of June of all time. But it brings me to my next point, And I don't want to extrapolate this through the end of the year, but let's talk about what sales are going to look like by the end of the year, because this is fascinating to me, folks. Work with me here. Numbers. Think numbers. 2021, the year, was beautiful. The most sales of all time in the history of Toronto, 122,133. Last year, 67,984. And that was up from 2023 when we saw 66,000. So for reference, 66,000 is the lowest. 68,000, let's round up, is the second lowest. That was in 2023 and 2024. This year, we are on pace, by my calculations, to be around 61,000 sales. Right? That's wild. We're gonna see the lowest sales ever, but 61,000 is, half of 2021. So just think about that for a moment. On this sheet, if you're watching on YouTube, well, I'll show it to you. There we are. Beautiful, Gaff. I'm charting everything from 2002 onwards. And 2023, 2024, and 2025 are going to be the bottom three numbers. Now, a pessimist, a cynic, a market bearer is going to say, oh my God, the sky is falling. And if I was to put a positive spin on this, I would say, yeah, that's called a market trough. So get ready for an insanely busy 2026 and 2027. Now I'm gonna pause there and allow those of you that hate me to go to the comments section and call me names and tell me just how much I'm pumping the tires of real estate. Go ahead, I'm gonna have a sip of coffee. Anya Ettinger is a friend of mine. She's big on TikTok. She told me, you know, just lean into it. I cannot believe the comments she gets on whatever forum, TikTok or whatever nonsense it is. 98% of her comments are just angry, vile, hateful. People that absolutely hate real estate agents, real estate, and all things real estate, they probably live in basements. Lean into it. What a jerk. What a jerk. I can't believe he said that. So yeah, I think those of you that understand economics would agree that when you look at 2023, 2024, and 2025, three months that are all right at the bottom of this chart of yearly sales from 2002 onward, you would probably agree that this is a market trough. And I know there are people that don't want it to be so or that don't agree or want real estate to drop 100% in value. But I think that when you look at the sales data, which is something that people like to look at prices, but I'd like to look at the sales because that to me represents the relationship in the market between buyers and sellers. If there aren't sales, you have you know, when you turn magnets around and they push away from each other, that's what you have in this market right now. That's the most fascinating part of the market to me. So sales will be sluggish. My fourth point here, folks, is that there will be relistings like crazy. So now my number four point, relistings like crazy. This has been a story all year. Properties are listed, there's an offer date, It doesn't sell, and then they terminate and relist. Now, you take a 999, they want 12, and they don't get any offers, so they relist at 1229. This is very common, but I want to tell you a quick story. We had a listing a couple of weeks ago on the east side where we listed for 1,099,000, and we sold for 1.3. Now, how many offers do you think it took us to get from 1,099,000 list to 1.3 sale? Uno. I'm holding up a finger for those that are listening. Oh, no, it's the index finger. Yes, we had one offer. Now, I'm not tooting my horn here and saying, wow, I got$200,000 over the list with one offer. A lot went into this. This showed really, really well. We spent two weeks renovating this house from top to bottom. We marketed it. We staged it. We did all the wonderful things that we do, which I won't get into today. But that's not automatic. Far from it. And I don't want to say there was luck involved. I had a great agent on the other side. The buyers really wanted to buy it. They loved the house. The sellers were willing to sell. Now, The next day, my seller said to me, I just emailed our mortgage broker about discharging the small mortgage, and he said, wow, good for you guys. I have so many clients on the east side that can't sell their homes. He was relieved. We're in a market now where there is a little bit of relief sometimes, which didn't used to be. And I think that when you see all of the re-listings that are happening out there, it makes you want to sell, or at least it should. So don't get me wrong, there are all kinds of sellers, houses, and condos that have absolutely no chance of selling. I've used this example before. Tell me I've got a listing at$599 and there isn't one right upstairs identical for$729.99. That's happening all over the city. And I'm not talking about slightly different. I'm talking about if I have a unit 1101, 1201 is for sale for 30% more. Those are what I call dummy listings. They might as well not even count. But when you look at what happened on the east side, as I said, we sold this place. We weren't lucky. We were fortunate. We did our work. We were awarded for it. And handsomely, there are so many other properties that are listing and relisting and listing and relisting. The relistings... are going to get worse. Now, once upon a time, Toronto Real Estate Board tracked the relisting data. Unfortunately, they took that away. I think it was November of 2024 was the last month that we had statistics for it. But I loved looking year over year and month to month because really at peak, you would see a third, a third of all listings were relists. I think that number, if we had those statistics today, would be upwards of 40%. I am seeing properties routinely listed three or four times where that used to be something that you would write home about. Now, this leads into point number five, terminations like crazy. We're going to have terminations all over the place, and this is going to filter into something that's my point number nine, which I'm going to save. What happens with the folks that terminate? Now, I put a note here. Some do it as a strategy. There was a brilliant strategy for a house on Leaside that didn't sell in, I think, Jan or Feb. They terminated the listing and took it off MLS. But the listing agent let everyone know it's still available. Now, what happens there? You stop the days on market from increasing. It's on the market for 30 days, people think price reduction. 60 days, you're well overdue. 90 days, they can't sell it. What the agent did after 30 days was terminate the listing, take it off MLS. Now anyone watching it is gonna call you, so right off the bat, you've done your job and solicited some interest, but now you get to sort of pull back and say, well, yeah, they might still sell, even though in this case they really want to. The days on market stop at 30, because you took it off the market after 30, and you continue to market it offline casually while pretending as though you know, they might sell, they might not. That property ended up selling, and I think the strategy was brilliant. Now, some people will do that, but that's with, you know, this is a$4.5 million house in North Toronto. Now, others will just take them off the market. Do they want to sell? And that's going to lead into one of my points later on. Now, point number six, the condo market will continue to decline. We sold a condo over the weekend where I said, I'm not a religious person, but I believe this was a gift from God. I could not believe that we got an offer, let alone the offer that we did, let alone the fact that we actually signed back for more money and to change certain things. And the I don't believe in luck, but I believe in good fortune when the agent on the other side maybe is a little bit green. So, the condo market, let's talk about it. The absorption rate, do you guys know what that is? That is the ratio of sales to listings. Now, the condo market absorption rate, or let's just talk about absorption rates in general, anything less than 50% signals a buyer's market, theoretically. Now, if you were to go back to some peak months, let's say, let's say, Oh, this is wild. 2021 in February, the absorption rate was 90% in the 416. That's not normal. March was 77 and a half. April was 64. And you know, that's 2021, right? That was a red hot market. But let's say 2023 and 2024, just to say we did. Let's take March. The absorption rate in the 416 in March of 2023 was 57%. In March of 2024, it was 40%. In March of 2025, it was 26.1%. Now let's look at April. 61% in 2023, 33.6 in 2024, 25% in 2025. Folks, the absorption rate is the lowest that I've ever seen it. Now the lowest I've ever seen, I'm gonna circle it here. September of 2024 in the 416, we hit an absorption rate of 24.6%. That is lower than one quarter. But we just surpassed that in May. In the 416, when we hit an absorption rate of only 24.2%, and my God, in the 905 guys in May, the absorption rate was 23.3%. Now, maybe stats are boring and absorption rates are something you're not interested in, but do you understand what that's saying? Statistically, it means that one of every four listings or less is producing a sale. Now, I mentioned we're seeing listings over and over and over. Property could be listed four times. You could argue, yeah, well, it's just because listings are up, relists are up. What I'm seeing... is that the sales figures in the condo market is absolutely abysmal, and they are selling. Tara and I just got an offer on, I won't say the address, but we got an offer on this listing, and again, I remain shocked. Now, who's the buyer for that? This is a Burlington agent who brought an offer from his Calgary client who's buying this condo for his son to go to the University of Toronto, and hey, after that, we'll just rent it out to some students or maybe his friends. So that's where you've got wealth. It's gonna be held in a family trust. you can look at this and say, say it's an$800,000 condo and at market peak, this was, I don't know, a million bucks. This person's saying, well, I could have my son rent a place, but why don't I just buy a place? The market's really weak right now. That's who's buying. But in terms of actual numbers, guys, the actual number of sales in the 416, in May, there were 973 condos sold. It's down from 1,297 in May of 2017 2024 and it's down from 1,694 in 2023. There just aren't a lot of sales out there. 973 condos sold in May in Toronto? That's the 416. So I do believe that as the summer progresses, we will continue to see weakness in the condo market. The people that are selling are those that need to and want to. And I've got a few folks that are now saying, let's see how we're gonna put all these predictions together. The condo market is continuing to decline. That's point number six. Terminations like crazy is point number five. Sales will be sluggish is point number three. That leads into my next point. The rental market is going to slow. Now the rental market slowing is a function of many things. First of all, immigration levels and the number of students. We've seen way too much about that in the media. We're not gonna get into that today. But I would also say that a lot of folks that can't sell their condos are looking to lease them. So I'll give you an example. I have a client who's got a condo on the market. We've reduced it in price once. She said, I think I'd like to explore the rental possibilities. In this building, here's what's competing against us. You have a similar size unit for$2,045 a month, 44 days on the market. Another unit for$2,050 a month, 88 days on the market. Another unit for$2,050 a month, four days on the market. Another unit for 2,075 a month, 92 days in the market. Another unit for$2,100 a month, 66 days in the market. And another unit, egregiously priced at 2,200 a month, 41 days on the market. So if you're playing along at home, that is six units that would be competing with us. And I told my client, you have to list at 1,995. You have to list lower than all of these. Now tell me like, oh, David, you're not working hard enough. No, like this is statistics. This is the market. These are not moving. Between 2000 and 45, look, the guy that's in the market at 2200, okay, cool, man, same unit is on the market for 2045, and it's not moving either. You gotta be 1995. Hell, you might have to take$1,900 to get a tenant in there. So that is another prediction for the summer market. Rentals are going to slow, which is ironic because the summer's usually when rentals are very busy. Think about this. What is the number one rental start date out of the 365 days in the real estate calendar? No, it's not January 1st, it is September 1st. September 1st because that's when students want to move. So every June and July, and August if you're really late to the game, that is when the rental market picks up. Now the rental statistics from the absorption rate perspective, the highest absorption rate in the rental market is always in July. Every single year because so many people with 60 days lead time, you're trying to find a place in July to take possession in September. this year it might peak you know for 2025 in july but that absorption rate is going to be way way lower than it is historically now my eighth summer prediction is that we will have a rate cut from the bank of canada in the month of july it's funny because the predictions the banks make they get to revise their predictions so like imagine if you like made a prediction with cash at a casino for the Super Bowl. You're like, I predict that the Kansas City Chiefs will beat the Philadelphia Eagles. And then the Eagles win. And then you're like, I'd like to revise my prediction. The banks routinely get to revise our predictions. It's so cute. They're like, yeah, you know, we're predicting that there's going to be a rate cut. And then there's not. They're like, we're revising our predictions. So all year, we've talked about interest rates till we're blue in the face. It seemed like in 2022 and 2023, that was all anyone wanted to talk about. And then the same thing in 2024, because now we're cutting before we were raising. It's still a topic. Interest rates, inflation. My God, we used to talk about pretty countertops. But I think the point is made. Inflation, believe it or not, is starting to creep up. And I wanna talk about real inflation versus posted inflation, but that's what we're reading between the lines. And I think that the cut we expected in June that didn't happen will probably come in July. I do not have the current prices from the street, but it's somewhere around an 80% probability that we're going to see a cut in July, and then hopefully again in December. Now, my ninth prediction for the summer. Sellers are going to have this theory. The fall market's going to save us. Now, this theory is not based on anything but a hope, a wish, and a dream. I will say, you know, the summer's usually slow. So if you think you want to put it on the market in the fall instead, you know, absolutely, positively. But I had a client who had a condo on the market in April, and she said, I think I want to take it off and list later. And I said, sure, when? She said, June. I said, like, wait, of this year? What does taking it off the market for two and a half months do? Market cycles, at a minimum, are four to six months to change. Seasons are three months. Market cycles are four to six. Now, I don't think that the fall's gonna be any busier than the lengthy spring, which consists of winter, spring, and summer, as we noted, than that market. But I do think that there are a lot of sellers out now that are saying, listen, it didn't work. We had it on the market for March, April, May, and June. The fall's gonna be better, and they'll put it up in the fall. What they're not realizing is that it didn't sell in March, April, May, or June because the market didn't agree with the price. Anything sells at a price, you know,$500,000 condo, okay, you know, 400, yeah, sure. It's not the point of making. Whether it's 499, 480, 475, it's going to sell at a price. Whether you want to accept that price or not is a determining factor for a lot of sellers, and as we've mentioned, a lot of them are deciding not to sell. If you don't need to sell, that's fine. But the market value, if you believe in an efficient market, is what a buyer is willing to pay. And so if you're on the market for four months, know you're not at market, are you going to relist in the fall and expect something different? What's the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So I think that there are so many people that are going to wait. And then what happens, guys? What happens? We see terminations. and we see people not accepting fair market value, we see sales are down because buyers and sellers can't find that overlap in the Venn diagram, and then everyone says, I've got a brilliant idea, I'm gonna take it off for the summer and put it up in the fall. What happens then? Most listings in the history of September ever, and that would put downward pressure on price. So if you're a buyer and you're watching this, I would say, hey, why do you wanna buy? That's the question, not to sugarcoat it. I always use the example of we're a couple and we live in a one bedroom condo and we're four months pregnant. Okay, yeah, you wanna buy a house for a very good reason. Yes, you could wait a month or three or six or nine. You're timing the market. I've been there, I've done that. Got two kids, done the condo, done the house. Been in my house for seven years now. I would have paid more for it. I don't care. Easy for me to say, but point being, not everything is just about the investment potential. If you're a buyer, remember why you're buying. You could wait until the fall, and maybe I'm right, and there's a massive glut of listings, and there's downward pressure on price, or you could take advantage of what's happening out there right now, which is that we're well off of a 2022 peak. So that's my ninth point, guys, is that I do believe a lot of sellers have the same theory that the fall market is going to save us, potentially inventory will pile up. People don't understand market cycles only last four to six months. And my last point here, it's not really a point, it's kind of a fun one. On Toronto Realty blog in January, I offered a prediction game. So if you want to include this in my predictions for summer, my predictions are that, The Toronto Realty Blog readers' predictions are so far off. Guys, this is kind of a fun one. Pay attention here. I put 10 questions on Toronto Realty Blog, and I think I said I'd give a$500 Starbucks card to whoever got the most points, right? These were our questions. First question was, what will be the average home price for 2025? And I said a point is scored if you're guessed within plus or minus 2%. That's gonna be a really, really hard one. The guesses were all over the place. I do think the average home price on a year-over-year basis We'll be down from 2024. And out of the 32 contestants that paid attention, exactly 16 of them said it will be higher and 16 said lower. Now, which month of the year will represent the highest average home price? This is interesting because historically it's May, but we just saw a May price that was well below 2024, which was below 2023. Do you think we're going to see a higher average home price in the fall? My third question, which individual months average, sorry, will any individual months average home price top 1.2 million? We haven't seen a$1.2 million monthly price since 2022. 13 of 32, which is less than half, but 13 people said yes. And I can tell you with confidence, pretty good confidence that that's not going to happen i did say yes for the record trump tariffs and taxes right now point number four question number four will you how many total sales will be in 2025 this is wild because the average of the 32 guesses was 72 000 and i just told you previously we're on pace for 58 000 the highest guess was 83 312 the lowest was one of my blog trolls named oscar the grouch that's kind of cool don't be wrong i love the trolls they're fun um 42,000, this guy guessed. And he might actually win. Which month of the year will represent the highest number of total sales? I don't know. That's fascinating. It depends on whether we'll see a busy fall. Number six, will any individual month of the year see more than 8,000 sales? 15 people out of 32 said yes. I don't think we're going to see that. How many total new listings will there be in 2025? I won't bore you with that one because the numbers don't really have any context. Here's a good one. How many individual months will see more than 20,000 new listings? That's a big number, 20,000 new listings. The average guess was 5.2. The lowest guess was zero. The highest guess was 10. I think we're probably gonna see seven or eight. Will any individual month of the year see a GTA condo price higher than the peak price? of 2024, which was in May, 767,000. Five of 32 said yes. I can't remember what I said, but those five people are going to be wrong. And last but not least, what will the Bank of Canada policy rate be after the last announcement on December 10th? The average guess was 2.26. The lowest was 1.5 and the highest was three. Now we're not going to see 1.5. We're not going to see three. I think we're going to see 2.25, is that about right? 2.25? The average guess was 2.26, completely coincidental. So guys, drink some water, some Gatorade. I'm a GZERO fan myself, can't take the sugar. It is so incredibly hot out there right now. For the record, I'm an addict. I mean, I have an addictive personality. I'm going to add to my son's American Ninja Warrior course. I went out and bought more stuff. I'm literally emailing the company that makes the stuff. I've got customer service. I'm like, can I get the monkey knot? Can I get one more swivel rope? What about the gadgets to put it on the line? I hope everyone has an amazing summer. In real estate, it's been a really tough six months. Interesting, it's kept us on our toes, but we become so conditioned in Toronto for the market only ever going up, that all of a sudden when we get into a tricky market, people can't make sense of it. We've talked a lot on Toronto Realty Blog and in this podcast about You know, inexperience, bad behavior, sellers and buyers fighting or not really understanding the market value. At the end of the day, it's just real estate. This podcast is supposed to be educational and informative. It's supposed to be fun. I hope that was fun. And above all, it's supposed to keep you coming back again and again. So I appreciate your viewership. Thank you so much for watching. If you're on YouTube, feel free to drop me a comment. Even if it's one of the negative, nasty ones, it's fine. If you're listening, wherever you get your podcasts, Spotify, Apple Music, or something cool and new that I don't even know about, Please remember to like, comment, or subscribe. Have a fantastic long weekend, and we will see you next time here on The Last Honest Realtor.