Luxury home sales surge in Montreal and Calgary

A luxury home in Rivière des Prairies, a north eastern borough of Montreal, Que. Photo by Tyrel Featherstone/The Gazette files

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Canada’s luxury housing market in 2025 is a tale of two economies, as Montreal and Calgary post double-digit gains in high-end home sales, while Toronto and Vancouver face sharp declines.

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Despite record-high prices and geopolitical headwinds weighing on major markets, Montreal’s $1-million-plus home sales surged in the first half of 2025, as did Calgary’s $4-million-plus luxury segment, according to Sotheby’s International Realty Canada’s mid-year report. In contrast, Toronto and Vancouver both saw top-tier sales drop.

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Vancouver had the worst performing market in the first half of 2025. Sales of $1-million-plus properties were down 26 per cent year-over-year, while $4-million-plus sales fell sharply by 51 per cent. Only two properties worth $10-million-plus were sold in the first half of 2025.

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The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) also reported a drop, with a 23 per cent decline in $1-million-plus sales and a 28 per cent decline in transactions above $4 million. However, Toronto’s $10-million-plus market quietly boomed with 12 sales, up 200 per cent from last year.

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Dianne Usher, senior growth director Ontario and managing broker at Sotheby’s International Realty Canada attributed the movement in Toronto’s ultra luxury ($10-million-plus) market to the buyers and sellers’ resilience to fluctuations.

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“Buyers and sellers in the $10-million-plus range are more resilient to the nuances and the fluctuations in the marketplace than buyers in the $1 million or $4 million price range,” Usher said.

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“They buy what they want, when they want, and they sell when they want to sell,” she continued.

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Montreal and Calgary both witnessed a surge in transactions across both $1-million-plus and $4-million-plus properties. In Montreal, $1-million-plus sales rose 26 per cent year-over-year while sales in the same category in Calgary rose three per cent. Whereas $4-million-plus sales rose 22 per cent in Montreal — including a $10-million-plus sale — and 43 per cent in Calgary. Usher attributed these gains to multiple factors.

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“(There has been) a lot of interprovincial movement to Alberta, particularly Calgary, in the last couple of years, so that speaks to the markets rising there. In Montreal, there was pent up demand over the last year and a lot of (people) wanting to buy in,” Usher said.

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Montreal was the only region where the condo market trended upward, with sales of entry-level ($1 million to $2 million) luxury units up 24 per cent year-over-year. Across the rest of the country, however, the condo market has been sluggish.

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In the GTA, for example, sales of condos in the $1-million-plus and $4-million-plus categories were down 29 per cent and 18 per cent respectively. Vancouver had a 24 per cent sales decline for condos worth more than $1 million and a 29 per cent drop for those priced at $4 million–plus. In Calgary, $1-million-plus condo sales fell eight per cent.