February 2026- Market Overview - A Slow Start

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. *Sales data provided by the Niagara Association of Realtors and the Hamilton-Burlington Realtors Association as submitted through Brokerage Members' input into the MLS sales. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels slower somehow. And in fact, we’re told the Toronto Real Estate Board, TRREB, is down to its lowest level in almost 20 years, both in unit sales and in price where the average residential sale price has slipped below $1 million dollars. And since that’s the largest board in the province by far, what it experiences is symptomatic of what is going on across the province. Of course, the data is still somewhat suspect since our board is still cautioning us that duplications exist due to the switch over from Matrix to PropTX. By way of explanation, while we were under the old MLS system Matrix, a lot of agents elected to also place their properties on TRREB. When our board switched over to PropTX, a system hosted by TRREB, all our Niagara listings are automatically picked up on the TRREB system. So, properties previously listed under TRREB separately are now in the system twice. Most have been cleared out by now, but the ones that have not tend to distort the numbers. But let’s take a minute and look at the average price. *Sales data provided by the Niagara Association of Realtors and the Hamilton-Burlington Realtors Association as submitted through Brokerage Members' input into the MLS sales. The average price across the Niagara Region came in at $598,869 in January. Slipping down below the $600,000 threshold. That represents a drop of $11,361 or 1.86% from December and $47,820 or 7.39% from January 2025. We shouldn’t read too much into the January figures. We’ve seen in the past that January sometimes comes in stronger than December and sometimes weaker, and yet that doesn’t necessarily forecast a trend for the year. December 2024 registered an average sale price of $678,274, while January 2025 saw the average drop to $646,689, a drop of $31,585 or 4.66%. December 2023, on the other hand, came in at $644,067, while the next month, January 2024, came in at $650,178, an increase of $6,111. Yet both those years, 2024 and 2025, saw prices rise in the spring and fall off in the latter months of the year. What is somewhat surprising, however, is the sharp decline we see from December to January in a couple of key markets. St. Catharines, for example, the largest municipality in the Niagara Region, saw prices come in for January at $518,631. That’s a drop of $42,353 or 7.55% in one month and ranks St. Catharines as the lowest average price in the Region for January, below Thorold, Welland, Niagara Falls, or even Port Colborne/Wainfleet. And Grimsby, generally a pricey local, came in at $584,868. That’s $247,426 below December, a drop of 29.7%. I don’t think those two price trends will hold as we push on into the middle months of the year, but it does illustrate just how unsettled the market is at the moment. And why is that? Why the feeling of a sluggish market and a slide coming into 2026? We can blame some of it on the weather. And no doubt that’s a factor. Compared to 2024-2025, this winter is in Siberia. Excessive amounts of snow and bitterly cold. Not the weather people want to be out and about in if they have a choice. But another factor that continues to loom large is uncertainty. The news continues to be filled with a play-by-play account of the tension between Canada and the U.S. Will the tariff game cause plants to close up and move south? Will the auto pact hold, or will auto workers be out of a job? Will interest rates continue to fall, or as some economists are predicting, will they actually start to rise in 2026? People just don’t know. And when they are unsure, they procrastinate. April 2026 will mark 4 years since the real estate downturn began. By the gauge of the 1980 and 1990 real estate recessions, as we enter the fifth year, we should begin to crawl out and see things start to pick up. Slowly at first, but like a giant locomotive, momentum soon begins to build. Will we see that start to happen in 2026, or will economic challenges delay the turnaround into 2027? Time will tell. As we’ve seen, January isn’t generally the bellwether of change, but by the spring, we should have a pretty good indication of how the year will unfold. At the moment, it’s a buyer’s market. And it’s a great time to acquire real estate, either for personal use or for investment. And be assured that the investment will appreciate significantly as we move forward. The question that remains is when. 2026 or 2027? A lot depends on the politicians in Ottawa and Washington.