2024 State of Luxury Annual Report
Canada’s luxury real estate market navigated a tumultuous landscape in 2024, shaped by competing forces. Political and economic uncertainty, housing taxes, sweeping regulatory overhauls, and rising inventory levels weighed on sales activity. However, more decisive factors including pent-up demand, unprecedented population growth and declining interest rates emerged as dominant market drivers and bolstered market stability. These dynamics will continue to offset headwinds and lay the foundation for a more active top-tier housing market in 2025.
“Canada’s conventional and luxury real estate market demonstrated remarkable resilience in 2024 and closed the final quarter of the year with a pick-up in sales activity that foreshadows further improvement in the months ahead. Several of the country’s largest markets emerged from two years of uncertainty to deliver sustained and consistent gains in 2024, with demand rechanneled into the single family home segment. Toronto and Montreal’s broad-based real estate market revitalization reflects the changes in market dynamics that are needed to stimulate housing mobility and sales nationwide: sellers are engaging in realistic pricing which enables constructive negotiations, while falling interest rates are gradually enabling upward mobility from the conventional into the top-tier and luxury markets,” said Don Kottick, President and CEO of Sotheby’s International Realty Canada. “Calgary continues to lead the country with expansion in top-tier housing sales, putting unprecedented pressure on housing supply and prices. In contrast, a generally weaker picture for Vancouver’s local economy, as well as the ongoing standoff between sellers clinging to peak-era valuations and buyers demanding prices that reflect today’s reality, are placing a drag on Vancouver’s market.”
According to Don Kottick, the luxury condominium market has emerged as one of Canada’s top long-term real estate investment opportunities, particularly in the cities of Toronto and Vancouver, where supply outweighs demand, and prices have declined from previous peaks. The current environment, characterized by lower prices, weak competition and easing interest rates, is now advantageous for invest-minded buyers. A slowdown in new condominium construction signals potential supply constraints in the mid- to long-term, while inevitable population growth enhances the market’s potential for investors.
Market Highlights
Canada’s largest metropolitan real estate market steadily resurged in 2024 as luxury sales over $4 million increased 21% year-over-year in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), setting the tone for broader trends nationwide.
The pace of Calgary’s luxury market expansion surpassed that of all other major Canadian cities in 2024, as economic confidence and record-setting interprovincial migration ignited housing demand. Residential sales over $1 million and $4 million saw annual gains of 42% and 100% respectively.
Montreal’s luxury market posted healthy annual gains of 38% in residential sales over $1 million and 16% for sales over $4 million.
Consumer sentiment and sales activity in Vancouver’s luxury market lagged in 2024, as buyers’ market conditions took hold and $4 million-plus residential sales closed the year 11% below 2023 levels.
Buyers’ market conditions solidified across the luxury condominium market in the cities of Toronto and Vancouver; however, sales over $4 million saw modest annual gains of 31% and 26% respectively.
The loosening of monetary policy by Canada’s central bank starting in June 2024 has had a steady trickle-up effect in stimulating activity, starting with the conventional, and then the entry-level top-tier and finally the luxury housing market.
Despite political volatility, Canada’s luxury real estate market remains primed for favourable buying opportunities in the initial months of 2025, with surging population growth, tempered interest rates and stabilizing home prices supporting new activity.
