Expert advice, market reports, and tips from the Niagara Region real estate professionals.
We’ve watched a trend emerge right on the heels of covid and continue each year since. And it applies both to market activity and also average sale price. That trend is upward movement during the first 6 months of the year followed by a downward slide over the last 6 months. Of course, some of this can be chalked up to seasonal cycles. We’ve always referred to the spring market as the time of heightened activity, and of course the winter months tend to be challenging to be out and about. And the watershed month tends to be June. That’s traditionally the peak. And July is when the market turns. That’s what we saw in last month’s newsletter when July sales figures came in and prices across the region were down $18,459. Well, August figures are now in, and that downward trend continues.
In the last issue of our newsletter, we saw that the month of June marked the second month in a row that the average sale price across the Region increased, ending the second quarter at $675,326. And when you consider January had come in at $598,869, that’s a six-month increase of $76,457.
What a difference a month makes. We’ve over the last few articles been talking about trends. One trend that has been apparent since the end of Covid is the spring rise and fall decline in the market, both in terms of activity and especially in price. But another trend that has surfaced is the way the spring rise has been getting shorter and shorter and the fall decline longer and longer. In 2024 average price across the region crested in June after gaining nearly $100,000 in that 6-month period. Then in 2025 the price peak came in April, after 4 months of more modest gains. Then this year, it appeared as though the ‘spring’ peak was happening in February, when we saw prices rise to $630,973 in February, drop to $628,701 in March and fall further to $615,073 in April.
You’ll see in the above chart that the unit sales for 2026 are pretty much a mirror image of 2025, with each month from January to April, 2026 being higher than the corresponding months of the previous year. I’ve included the year 2024 to show that in spite of modest gains in the first months of 2026 as compared to 2025 (1,714 as opposed to $1,666), these results are a dim reflection of the 2,141 logged in over the first 4 months of 2024.
The average sale price across the Region is about the same as last month ($628,701 compared to $630,923). Down slightly by $2,272 with half the Region’s Municipalities lower than February and the other half higher. However, when we compare the average in March to the year end from the previous year, we see that the first quarter of 2026 registered a gain of $18,471. $628,701 in March, compared to $610,230 at year end 2025, which the same period last year, first quarter of 2025 saw prices actually drop by $6,053. Ending the year 2024 at $678,274 and by month end March 2025 prices had only reached $672,221.
There’s a pretty well-established pattern that we see reoccurring year after year. The market strengthens over the first half of the year, but then recedes during the second half. And we are talking here both in terms of average price as well as number of units sold. So, the fact that that’s what we are seeing in the early stages of 2026 should come as no surprise.
Numbers don’t lie. At least that’s what they say. But they don’t always tell the whole story. According to the stats provided by the local board, the Niagara Association of Realtors, the number of sales that came in in January was 335. That’s down marginally from December (348) and actually up 11 from the 324 registered in January one year ago.
In many ways December sales figures held no real surprises. Ever since the end of Covid, we have seen the market numbers gain momentum in the first half of the year and then trail off over the last half. And here we are talking both unit sales and average sale price. What is surprising however, is the severity of the drop in average sale price in December.
Looking at the sale figures for November we see the average residential sale price is down not only regionally, but in 8 of the 10 municipalities we follow. That is not particularly surprising. It’s a trend that repeats itself year after year. Prices build in the first half of the year, and slide in the second half. Not every month of course. Last year for example prices spiked in October for some reason. This year there was a $5,205 bump up in September over August. But overall, the pattern holds.
There have been a lot of unusual external pressures affecting the market, not only over the course of 2025, but especially in the final months of the year. The tariff issues with the U.S. continue to make headlines. The Bank of Canada once again cut its benchmark rate by 1/4% and on top of that, there is all the uncertainty surrounding the newly introduced Federal Budget. And yet, in spite of it all, the real estate market continues to follow a pretty predictable path as set out over the past few years.
