Ron Butler Sees 40 Percent Drops in Real-estate Bubble
Ron Butler says Canada’s real-estate bubble is still grinding lower, with some Ontario markets now down 40 percent. The Butler Mortgage founder says the slide is spreading across Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta, while completed GTA condos sit empty and rents have fallen for 18 straight months.
40 Percent in Four Ontario Markets
40 percent is the figure Butler used for Niagara, Hamilton, Brampton, and Oshawa, where he said prices have fallen that far. “I can show you 40 percent in Niagara. I can show you 40 percent in Hamilton. I can show you 40 percent in Brampton. I can show you 40 percent in Oshawa,” he said on Hub Dialogues.
34-year historic lows are the benchmark he used for sales. “When you’re up a bit off a horrifically low low, like 34-year historic lows, then it’s really not that big a deal,” he said, framing 2026 as a year when unit sales will probably be up a bit from that base. For buyers, that means a small sales improvement does not erase the wider price reset.
GTA Condos and 525 Square Feet
Thousands of completed units in the GTA sitting empty is Butler’s clearest evidence that supply is not clearing at current prices. He said rents have fallen for 18 straight months, which leaves owners with weaker cash flow while new buyers face a market where the old pricing math no longer works.
525 square feet is his cutoff for the kind of small condo he says the market misread. Butler described a 485 square foot unit and said, “There’s literally no one, no breathing soul, decided, ‘I’d love to live in this 485 square foot unit,'” while also saying, “In order to make the price per square foot work that you were paying for these new construction projects, you would have to find someone to pay $6,000 a month rent for a dog crate condo,” before adding, “Which is absolutely senseless. It was ridiculous, but it kept on going.”
Townhomes, Taxes and Buyers
Four years of dead townhome sales came before a recent GST and HST reduction on new low-rise construction helped spur a surge, Butler said. He also said land prices for condo-eligible sites in the 416 have fallen significantly, property taxes in Toronto are among the lowest in North America, and the burden has been offloaded onto new buyers instead.
Two-and-a-half times income was the old affordability benchmark Butler cited; today, he said buyers are facing eight or nine times income. “This is the compelling issue today for young people in Canada,” he said. “I want the same treatment as my parents got. That’s all I’m asking.”
25 years is the horizon Butler used to describe the policy drag he sees in Toronto, where he said a developer spent a five-and-a-half-hour conference about one tree with five participants. “If a very small group of people can put up their hands and say we don’t want it, and that becomes a sticking point…if you can’t build it, you can’t build it,” he said.
