Ep 28: Guelph real estate weekly sales update Dec 1-15 2025

📉 Guelph Real Estate Market – Early December 2025 (Dec 1–15)

Market Trend & Overall Context

• December is traditionally the slowest month of the year — this year is no exception.
• Sales are trending down ~25% compared to the same period in 2024.
• If December finishes as currently trending, 2025 total unit sales may end about 6.4% lower than 2024.
• Guelph’s market is now seen as a weak balanced market, leaning toward a buyers’ market, based on months of inventory.
  Guelph Realtors Beth & Ryan Waller

Inventory Snapshot (as of mid-December)

• 426 total homes for sale — down slightly from late November (452).
• Condo/townhouse inventory: 233
• Detached/semi detached: 193
• Months of Inventory (MOI): ~3.1 — indicating more supply relative to demand than earlier in the year.
  (This is part of why the market feels more favorable to buyers.)
  Guelph Realtors Beth & Ryan Waller

December Unit Sales — Comparison to Prior Years

• Average daily sales in 2025: 4.7 per day
• December average sales over the past years:
  • 2020: 4.1/day
  • 2021: 3.5/day
  • 2022: 2.4/day
  • 2023: 2.1/day
  • 2024: 3.2/day
  • 2025 (current trend): 2.5/day
    This shows December 2025 is consistent with the typical slow end-of-year trend.
    Guelph Realtors Beth & Ryan Waller

🏘️ What Sold in Dec 1–15, 2025

🏢 Condos & Townhouses

• 11 sold units
• Price range: $390,000 → $782,000
• Average sale price: ~$516,000 (a notable drop from prior months)
• Selling dynamics:
  • 2 sold above ask
  • 0 sold at ask
  • 9 sold below ask
• Suggests softer pricing and potential oversupply, especially in stacked townhouse segment.
  Guelph Realtors Beth & Ryan Waller

🏡 Detached & Semi-Detached Homes

• 26 sold units
• Price range: $500,000 → $1,370,000
• Average sale price: ~$797,000 (prices have dipped compared with summer)
• Sale price performance:
  • 4 sold above ask (but mostly due to pricing strategy, not strong demand)
  • 1 at ask
  • 21 below ask
• There’s also an increase in cancelled or postponed listings as some sellers wait for spring.
  Guelph Realtors Beth & Ryan Waller

🧠 Big Picture Takeaways

✅ Sales volumes are slowing significantly as the year winds down.
✅ Prices are softer than earlier in the year — especially in condos.
✅ More inventory and slower demand are pushing the market slightly in buyers’ favour.
✅ Seasonal trends are strong — expect quiet winter sales with spring pickup potential.
Guelph Realtors Beth & Ryan Waller

You can always get touch with Beth and Ryan Waller on their website

Transcript

 Welcome to the Guelph Real Estate Report podcast with your host and Guelph realtor, Ryan Waller. This podcast is designed to provide information for those buying and selling homes in the Guelph area to make the process more informative, fun, and a little less stressful. Now on with the show! Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Guelph Real Estate Report podcast. This is episode number 28. My name is Ryan Waller and I work in Guelph Real estate with my wife, Beth. I guess this will be the last episode of 2025. It's crazy to me to think that I'm now 28 episodes into this, and we've had over 500 downloads of it so far, which kind of blows my mind because before I started recording this, there was no such podcast and 500 people were doing something else. So I thank you for tuning in, listening to this, the encouragement, the advice, the feedback, and we'll keep going all the way through 2026. The book for 2025 is pretty much written now between December 15th and the 31st. Not much happens. It's probably the slowest two week period of the year. So I can tell you, reflecting back on 2025. If you were a seller, you probably weren't overly thrilled with the way the market went. There are there were moments, for sure. There were moments for sure. But generally the sellers in the market this year didn't get the results they wanted for the most part, and the market was down. Prices were down, inventory was up. Buyers took their time to make decisions on things. There were more conditions in offers. The whole process took a little bit longer. It seemed as if you were a seller this year. You had to have a little more patience. Now that's not the case in every transaction, but it certainly happened a lot more than we've seen it in prior years. If you were a buyer, well, it's been a better year for you than it has been in the past few years. Prices have come down about. 1% 2%. On average, the number of transactions came down and inventory levels went way up. So you had more selection at cheaper prices. And especially if you're buying things like a condo, you probably got a really good deal in 2025 versus prior years. And will it get better in 2026? I mean, it's impossible to say. I suspect it will get slightly better based on our 2026 predictions and what I've been reading out there, that the average price is probably going to decline a little bit further in 2026. I always caution people when they're using December sales volumes, that it's such a small sample size compared to the other months that the sales come in. Sure, there are probably going to be 75 to 100 transactions that happen this month in Guelph, but compared to other months, it's much, much lower. So when we look at December sales volumes, especially when we look at the mid-month numbers, it's to be taken with a grain of salt because they are smaller than what we'd expect to see. This is the time of year where some sellers decide it's too late in the year. I don't want to be bothered over Christmas with showings. I'm going to take my house off the market. So at this time of the year, mid-December is when we typically start to see a lot of cancellations. So what's interesting to me is not necessarily the sales numbers for the month, because we already know they're going to be low, but more so the behavior of buyers and sellers. And by that I mean what is happening with the sellers out there? What is happening with the buyers out there? Are they giving any clues to what we could expect to see early in the year next year? And there are a few things that, as we go through the numbers so far in December, that would indicate that we are going to have a busy January with listings. So from the top here, let's just get into it. So far we're trending in December to be -25% in sales volume. That's units the number of houses that sell. Uh, again it's down versus last year, but it's up versus the prior year. So I wouldn't put a whole lot of emphasis on that. We're looking to be at about 74 sales on trend for the month puts us at about um. Three just over three months inventory or a buyer's market? No surprise there. Um, at the end of, uh. I'm sorry. As of mid-December, we have 426 available homes. And this was at 452 at the end of November. So we've declined about 5% in overall volume. So that's some sales and some cancellations versus the end of November. Um, of that 233 are condos. That was 238 and 193 are detached houses. And that was 215. So decline in both segments as we get into mid-December. Like I said, some sales, some cancellations, but overall decline, we are now at 426. Uh, in my prior, uh, podcast, I had mentioned that I anticipate probably we're going to get to 400 by the end of the year. Uh, we're well on track to get there. We're actually right on track to get the 400. And just for context, January 2022. We had about 50 ish in one of the weeks in January, so an eight fold increase in inventory over four years. Wow. That if anybody's talking to you about how prices are going to skyrocket in the spring, or even in the winter, it's not going to happen because we have so many products available, so many homes available that buyers would have to come out an entire city. The entire GTA would have to come into Guelph into January to eat through all that volume and spike up prices. It's just not going to happen. If you take a look at so far this December, uh, we're selling about two and a half houses per day on average. Uh, again, that's below last year. But, uh, in line with with prior years, what has sold so far this month? Well, there's been 37 sales so far into mid-December. Uh, 11 were condos, 26 were detached. And, uh, we'll get into a little bit more about each of those two segments, because there is some interesting information in there. Um, of the 11 condos that sold, 390,000 was the low price. That was, um, a unit in the low rises at, I believe it was 67 Kingsbury and seven 882,000 was the high. That was a townhome on 72 York. And overall the average was about 516,000 so far in the first half of December. Now, as I mentioned, take it with a grain of salt. But earlier this year, in the spring, we were hovering slightly below and slightly above 600,000. We're now at 516,000, so significantly lower. But all it takes is one sale over a million bucks and that average gets bumped up. So do with it what you may, but it's not, uh, it's not something that, uh, I would take too seriously at this point. We'll keep watching it and we'll let you know if we start to see something. But it's interesting that month over month over month, this number keeps coming down. And I anticipate, as I've said at 100 times, I think into the spring, we're still going to see prices coming down on the condo segment. They're going to be tougher to sell. Homes here sold at 97.5% of the last posted asking price, which there's no surprise there. Uh, it means there is a little bit of room to negotiate on average from the last listing price. Um, two of the units sold over the asking price. None sold at the asking price, and the remaining 9 or 82% sold under the asking price. Um, we are in a situation where we used to have, on average, 1.6 unit cell per day. So if we had 30 days, we would say about um, 50 would sell in a month. Now into November and December we're hovering around one per day. So 30 days, 30 sales. And so far we're at 11 in 15 days in December. So less than one. We'll keep an eye on this. But there they seem to be selling less and less per day, despite the fact that the inventory is rising. And an interesting fact that I posted a YouTube short on and give us a subscribe if you're on YouTube and, uh, you see our videos where we're aiming to get the 500 subscribers, we're at 320. And, um, I posted a short about this talking about the number of vacant condos for sale, vacant condos, townhouses, apartments, stacked townhouses, and 44% of the available. Listings are vacant, which seems crazy to me, but it is an indication that sellers will not accept the current market pricing for whatever reason. They don't want to sell it, they don't actually want to sign the paperwork and be done with the transaction. They don't want to rent it either. They would rather just leave it vacant, pay a mortgage, pay condo fees, pay taxes, pay utilities, and be in the read every single month. Then accept the reality of the current market and that alone is telling. Will they continue to leave it vacant for the next year? Will they finally give in and sell what the buyers are willing to offer? I don't know, the answer is unknown, but the more of more of those that stay on the market are going to just continue to build up the inventory when other people decide to sell theirs, too. So we've got all this glut of people that aren't selling their vacant properties. Well, then we've got January, February, March and the Spring market hits. You can only imagine if we're 100 or if we're at 233 now, who knows, maybe we could get the 400. And the higher the amount of inventory available, the lower the price has become because buyers have more selection. So it'll be interesting to watch this. The clues here are a lot of vacancies. Rising inventory or stable inventory, and lower unit selling per day. It's a recipe for declining prices and anybody who's telling you otherwise, I would ask them for some facts on why that is, because I see no compelling reason in the short term for the condo market to increase. Great news for buyers, great news for first time buyers. Great news for parents who are looking to buy something for their student to live in while they're at U of G, which interestingly, seems like a market that has really slowed down. Um, okay, let's flip over to the detached and semi-detached segment. It's a little bit of a different story here. We had 26 sales. Uh, 500,000 was the low that was in the ward. 1.37 million was on in Cortright East and overall average was 7.97 797,000. Now, in November, I had mentioned that we were at 794 or something like that. And now that we were below 800,000, this is a new sort of threshold that we've broken. Well, here we are in December, still at that same threshold. So I'm wondering if maybe we're going to sit here for a little while. Under the $800,000 mark. And there are some clues here to, um. Homes here sold at about 98% of the last listed asking price. Again, not a real big stat. Uh, but it is interesting that there is still negotiation room to be had here. Doesn't seem to be changing. Four of the six, sorry, four of the 26 sold over the asking. That's 15%. One sold at the asking, and 21 or 81% sold under the asking price. Just keep in mind that the ones that sold over the asking price at this point, this isn't some miraculous, amazing realtor. This is a situation where it was intentionally priced low as a strategy by the seller slash realtor to get interest and to potentially sell the product slash house quickly. Why would they do this? Well, of course, it's never really disclosed, but sometimes if a seller is in a situation where they really need to sell the house like they've got the bank knocking on the door, they intentionally price low to get a bunch of traffic through so that they can get competing offers and potentially an offer without conditions, so that the transaction is done in seven days and they can get out of it. It's never really disclosed why, but it's usually a very special situation where somebody would price their house low. And, uh, review offers. Now, the misconception here sometimes that sellers have is that if I price my house low and I get three offers and none of the offers are at a price, I'm actually willing to sell it at, do I have to accept one of them? And the answer is no. As the seller, you don't have to accept anything. But if after seven days, the highest offer you get is not something you want, um, it might be telling you that maybe your expectations are out to lunch, but, um. Anyways, overall, um, we have noticed cancelled listings here. Of course, as you get into this time of year, it does happen. Uh, I don't think that, uh, it's anything like the condo segment. They are. They are canceling, but they're canceling and either listing at a lower price or coming back in the spring, which I think a lot of people are starting to to do. We watch this segment. And related to the average price is the amount of, ah, the amount of homes that sell over $1 million. And this historically there are some anomalies, but for the most part it sells between 15 to 20% of the monthly sales are $1 million plus. Um, in October it was 17. So right in the middle of the range. But November was lower. It was only at 7%. And December we're at 11. So both of those months below the average that we've seen of 15 to 20. If we get three months under 15%, um, you know, that's an indication that the market is coming down or that segment of the market is less powerful than it once was. So that's certainly going to have an impact on the overall average price. If the million dollar home segment comes down and it looks like it is, all of this and a little bit more probably is available on our website in blog format. I will link it in the show notes. Uh, this is something we update every two weeks. So, um, take a look forward there. It's at Beth and Ryan, AKA you'll find it right from our home page and give us a call if you have any questions. This is the time of year where we start getting people calling, saying, I'm getting ready to list. I have some questions for you. What's the process? So if you're one of those people, uh, get in touch with us. Info at Beth and Ryan is probably your best bet. Talk to you soon.