At a Glance

• Buyers are still out in force. Showings hit 21,953 in June. That is down from May’s record 24,003, but up a hefty 16.2 percent from a year ago and the second-busiest month on record.
• Sales climbed again. 650 homes sold, up 2.4 percent from May and the second straight monthly gain, though still about 4.7 percent below last June.
• The median actually ticked up. The median sale price was $690,000 (up 0.6 percent from May, down about 4.8 percent year over year), while the average eased to $730,668 (down 6.3 percent year over year).
• Homes are selling at or above list, mostly. The average sale came in at 100.4 percent of the last list price. Freehold homes are still fetching a small premium, while condos are the lone laggard at 95.5 percent.
• The market stayed balanced. Months of supply held at 4.1, with condos the most buyer-friendly segment at 8.8 months and semi-detached homes the tightest at 1.7.
• Rates are steady, but fixed costs have crept up. The Bank of Canada is holding at 2.25 percent, yet an oil-driven jump in bond yields has pushed 5-year fixed mortgage rates back above 4.3 percent.
• The local job market is soft. US tariffs and tech-sector restructuring have pushed Waterloo Region unemployment to about 8.2 percent, above both the provincial and national averages, which is a headwind for buyer demand.
• Future supply faces a real constraint. A Region of Waterloo water-capacity limit continues to pause new development approvals across much of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge, which could tighten the longer-term housing pipeline.

Last month I flagged that buyers were coming back out in force, and June numbers are still pretty strong.   Showings did pull back from May’s all-time record, but at 21,953 they were still up roughly 16 percent from a year ago, which we should know is the second-busiest month in the past five years. It's of course Summer so I expect when July numbers are in we will be down from June but what we want to see is that we are beating previous Summers.  More importantly, it seems that these showings are finally converting into sales. Sales rose for a second straight month, and for the first time in a while the median price nudged up rather than down. 

In this post we are going to begin with the usual and take a look at the numbers.  From there I want to look at some over arching topics specifically the oil shock and interest rates, the US trade war then finally what CMHC and CREA are predicting.

Showings

Buyer showings across Waterloo Region came in at 21,953 in June. That is down about 8.5 percent from May’s record 24,003, which is exactly the kind of seasonal easing you would expect as we roll toward summer. Again the number that I want is the year-over-year comparison. June 2025 saw 18,886 showings, so we are up a very healthy 16.2 percent from a year ago. Whatever hesitation that seemed to be gripping buyers over the past couple of years, is yet again this month showing signs of fading. So far so good.

Prices

Median Sale Price

The median sale price across all property types came in at $690,000 in June. That is actually up about 0.6 percent from May’s $686,000, a small move, but a welcome change of direction after months of drifting sideways or lower. Year over year we are still down roughly 4.8 percent from the $725,000 we saw in June 2025. The headline here is stability with a slight upward lean. Prices have settled into a predictable band, which is far easier to plan around than the wild swings of a few years back.

Average Sale Price

The average sale price was $730,668, down about 1.7 percent from May and roughly 6.3 percent below the $779,480 we saw a year ago. Notice that the average slipped while the median rose. That tells me the softness this month was concentrated at the top end, with fewer of the big-ticket sales that pull the average up. For buyers shopping the higher price brackets, that is worth paying attention to.

Prices by Property Type

Looking at median price by home type for June, single family homes sat at $772,500, semi-detached homes at $601,250, townhouses at $567,500 and condos at $380,000. Every segment is down from a year ago, but the spread is telling. Townhouses have taken the biggest year-over-year haircut at about 11 percent, condos are off roughly 9.5 percent, semis about 7.5 percent, and single family homes have held up best at around 6.4 percent. On an average basis the ranking is much the same: single family homes at $838,386, townhouses at $568,891, semi-detached homes at $591,692 and condos at $395,035.

Sales

A total of 650 homes sold in June, up 2.4 percent from May and the second consecutive monthly increase. Those record showings are indeed turning into firm sales. We are still about 4.7 percent below last June’s 682, so we have not fully closed the gap on last year’s pace, but the momentum has been consistently in the right direction through the spring. Single family homes led activity with 438 sales, followed by townhouses at 104, condos at 68 and semi-detached homes at 48. Keep in mind that July and August typically cool off a bit before the fall market kicks back in.

Months of Supply

Months of supply held at 4.1 in June, flat from May and just below the 4.2 we saw a year ago. A reading right around four months is still a touch higher than the three months I like to see, but it is squarely in balanced territory. Supply varies enormously by home type. Semi-detached homes are the tightest at just 1.7 months, with single family homes at 3.3, townhouses at 4.9 and condos sitting way out at 8.8 months. Same advice as last month. If you are a seller, you want to be holding a semi or a freehold, not a condo.

Sale Price as a Percentage of List Price

This is the chart I am watching most closely this month. The average sale closed at 100.4 percent of the last list price in June. In plain English, the typical Waterloo Region home sold for slightly more than its asking price. That has eased back a hair from May’s 101.4 percent, but staying above 100 percent tells you that well-priced listings are still drawing competition. By type, semi-detached homes led at 101.3 percent of list, single family at 101.1 percent and townhouses at 100.5 percent, all fetching a small premium. Condos trailed at 95.5 percent, meaning the average condo sold for about four and a half percent below its last asking price. If you needed one number to sum up where the soft spot in our market is, that is it.

The Bigger Picture: The Economy Behind Our Housing Market

Local prices and sales of course do not exist in a vacuum. To end this post I'd like to look at 3 things that are steering the market here in Waterloo Region.   This year, three forces well beyond Waterloo Region are pushing and pulling on our market at the same time.

1. Interest rates and the global oil shock, 
2. The US trade war, and,
3. Market confidence & CREA and CMHC in the news.

1. Interest Rates and the Oil Shock

On the surface, rates look calm.   The majority of what you will hear about in the press has to do with variable rates -  and is positive.  The Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25 percent on June 10, its fifth hold in a row, and the next decision lands July 15. For anyone in or considering a variable-rate mortgage, that stability is genuinely good news and is, i think, a big part of why showing activity has stayed so strong.  (Note that for the past 9 months I have been saying that these rate cuts should kick start the market and have been consistently wrong...!)

Underneath, though, the fixed side of the market has quietly gotten more expensive. The US-Israel conflict with Iran disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which, as everyone on earth now knows, is a chokepoint that handles roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil, and the resulting energy price spike sent inflation expectations higher. Bond markets reacted the way they always do. The Government of Canada 5-year bond yield, which is what fixed mortgage rates are priced off, has climbed about 0.35 to 0.40 percentage points since the conflict flared and is now sitting around 3.0 percent. Lenders followed. Typical 5-year fixed mortgage rates have moved back up to roughly 4.3 percent and higher. If you are like me, married to someone who prefers the certainty of a fixed payment, this is something to watch. It is not something that is going to break the market, but it does trim buying power at the margin and dampen demand - think investors buying a rental house where their lender will only allow a fixed rate mortgage to finance.

For a refresher on the bond market and mortgage rates click here:  https://terryriddoch.ca/how-the-bond-market-drives-fixed-rates-in-ontario/

2. The Trade War and Waterloo Region Jobs

This is the force that hits closest to home, because Waterloo Region runs on some of the exact industries US tariffs are aimed at: advanced manufacturing, auto parts, metals, and to a degree technology. When those employers pull back, local buyer confidence tends to follow.  So even if no actual major employment calamity occurs, the prospect of bad news erodes confidence and with that all the individual decisions to make a real estate move suffers. 

To that point, context matters here and the context is more reassuring than the headlines suggest. It is true that manufacturing is a big part of who we are. It employs roughly 17 percent of the local workforce, somewhere around 57,000 people across about 1,850 companies, which makes Waterloo Region the fourth-largest manufacturing base in the country. Yes that is a real concentration of trade-exposed jobs, and it is exactly why tariff news lands harder here than in most Canadian cities.

The flip side is the part people tend to forget. If about one in six local jobs sits in manufacturing, then roughly five in six do not. The other 83 percent of our workforce is spread across health care, education, public services, retail, hospitality, construction, finance, and a large professional and technology sector, most of which serve local and domestic demand rather than goods crossing the US border. Those jobs are not immune to a slower economy, but they are not in the direct line of fire of a tariff on steel or auto parts either. A diverse economy is a shock absorber, and ours is more diverse than if we were a simple factory-town.

That balance is why the local damage, though real, has been contained rather than catastrophic. The scale of the provincial hit is still significant. Ontario's Financial Accountability Office estimates US tariffs will leave the province with about 119,200 fewer jobs in 2026 than it would otherwise have had, with manufacturing absorbing the brunt at roughly 57,700 fewer jobs, concentrated in primary metals, motor vehicle parts, and machinery and electronics. Those are precisely the shop floors and supply chains that a lot of Waterloo Region paycheques depend on.

You can see the strain in the local numbers. The Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo unemployment rate has been running around 8.2 percent in early 2026, above the Ontario average near 7.3 percent and the national figure closer to 6.5 percent. Tech-sector restructuring, once our growth engine, has piled on top of the manufacturing pressure. It is not all bad news. Communitech, Velocity and the broader startup ecosystem keep creating jobs, and employers still struggle to fill skilled trades. But on balance the local labour market is softer than we are used to, and that softness is one reason buyer demand, while recovering, has not roared back to prior peaks.

For the housing market, the takeaway is a nuanced one. The trade war is a genuine headwind on confidence and on the manufacturing paycheques that support part of our buyer pool. But because most local jobs sit outside the tariff blast radius, the effect is a drag on demand rather than a collapse in it. Pair that with lower prices and stable interest rates, and you get exactly what the June data showed: a market that is recovering steadily, not booming and not breaking.

3. What CMHC and CREA Expect

As all the news about (potential) employment challenges serves to steer the market so to does what the media is reporting from our friends at CMHC and CREA.  In short, their national forecasters are reading reading the market as follows: a rebound in activity paired with flat prices in the near term. However, CMHC, in its 2026 Housing Market Outlook, singled out Ontario as the one region expected to see prices actually dip this year, by about 1.4 percent, precisely because the trade tensions have hurt automotive and metals and made buyers cautious. They go on to note that they expect those pressures to ease over time, with sales climbing across Ontario’s major markets through 2028.

The Canadian Real Estate Association tells a similar story. In its April 2026 update, CREA trimmed its outlook and now projects the national average price rising just 1.5 percent this year to roughly $689,000, with essentially no growth in Ontario, before a modest further gain in 2027. CREA was explicit about the cause of the downgrade: the oil price spike raised bond yields, fixed mortgage rates jumped, and that is expected to curtail some activity.

Put it all together and the Waterloo Region takeaway is consistent. Expect prices to hold in a fairly flat band through the rest of 2026, with real support underneath from constrained new supply, and a gradual firming likely as the economy stabilizes into 2027.  For buyers, this is about as much breathing room as our market has offered in years. For sellers, the deals are still there for those who price to the market rather than to last year’s headlines.

Terry Riddoch

If you would like to talk through how any of this applies to a building you own or one you are considering, I am always happy to walk through the numbers.

Terry Riddoch
Real Estate Broker -- Multifamily and Investment Properties, Ontario

Phone: 519 591 1725
Email: [email protected]
Web:www.terryriddoch.ca

Sources

• Local sales, price and inventory data:Information Technology Systems Ontario (ITSO) via InfoSparks / ShowingTime Plus.
• Showing volume:BrokerBay Market Trends.
• National housing forecast and outlook:CMHC Housing Market Outlook.
• Resale forecast and MLS statistics:Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) Quarterly Forecasts and CREA Statistics.
• Policy interest rate:Bank of Canada, policy interest rate.
• Government of Canada bond yields:Bank of Canada, selected bond yields.
• 5-year fixed mortgage rates:Ratehub, best 5-year fixed rates.
• Tariff impact on Ontario jobs and GDP:Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, The Potential Impacts of US Tariffs on the Ontario Economy.
• Regional and national unemployment:Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey.
• Waterloo Region employment by sector:Region of Waterloo, Diverse and Resilient Economy and Advanced Manufacturing.
• Local development and water-capacity constraints:Region of Waterloo, Water Services.