Is the Guelph Housing Market Cooling? Data-Driven Breakdown for Jan 2026

In this episode, Beth & Ryan break down the latest Guelph real estate data, including sales activity, days on market, condo vs freehold trends, and what it means for buyers and sellers in Guelph

• Guelph market performance this month
• What buyers negotiated hardest
• Current Guelph real estate inventory levels
• What this means for the months ahead

Based on Guelph MLS sales data, freehold homes averaged 96.9% of the last list price, while condos averaged 94.9%, highlighting continued differences between the two segments.

Beth & Ryan specialize exclusively in the Guelph real estate market and publish regular neighbourhood-level analysis to help buyers and sellers make informed decisions through their articles on GuelphToday and their Waller Wednesday segment on Magic 106.1

Link to Guelph real estate updates

Link to Guelph neighbourhood information

Visit us online at https://bethandryan.ca

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

Transcript

Guelph real estate market update for Jan 1- 15, 2026

 Welcome to the Guelph Real Estate Report podcast with your host and Guelph realtor, Ryan Waller. This Guelph real estate market 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. Hey everyone and welcome back to the Guelph Real Estate Report Podcast. This is episode number 30. My name is Ryan Waller and I work in Guelph Real Estate with my wife, Beth. I hope your new year is getting off to a great start. We're now already halfway through the month. I hope you're doing what you had planned to do. I know I made some New Year's resolutions to be a little bit healthier all around. Um, getting to the gym. Drinking less alcohol. Taking my vitamins. Reading more books. All those things are part of my New year routine. So if you have one, I hope you're on track. Uh, if you don't have one, I guess it's never too late. And, um, this is the time of year in real estate where it's slower. So, uh, Beth and I try to maximize that because as well, in real estate, you don't know exactly when it's going to pick up. But after all these years now we've sort of figured out that January is a little slower. It starts to pick up in February, and by March your full tilt back into it. This is my eighth year in Guelph real estate, and probably the eighth different year that I've seen. 2026 is already starting off, unlike others that I have seen. And we're going to talk a little bit about that today and what it may mean for the rest of the month, but also maybe over the next month, based on what we're starting to see in the early days of 2026. And I will start off prefacing that January is slow. If you have an average of five houses that sell every day over a full year period January, February. July. August. November. December. Are usually below, and it's usually the spring months and a blip in September and October that make up the over average months. So you would expect, and my historical data tells me that in January we don't get five sales per day, but we get closer to three. And in fact, over the past 5 or 6 years, I think it's six that I have been tracking this. It's been around three per day. But let me tell you that January 2026 is nowhere near that. In fact, January 2026, two weeks in is the slowest month that I have recorded by far. By far so far in January 2026, we have 17 sales in 15 days. That's just over one per day. It's been a really interesting time for sure. Where are the buyers? What are they doing? And what are sellers doing? Are they panicking or are they just chalking it up to be a typical January and that it's going to be slower and things will get better? They probably will. I can't see the month ending at one sale per day and by far being the worst month we've seen, but I guess it's possible. I can tell you from our own listings that we are getting showings. There aren't many, but we are getting showings and buyers are coming through. They're just not doing anything. They'll look at our house. They'll look at some other listings. They'll think about it. And in most cases we've seen, they just don't do anything. They maybe are too nervous to get into the Guelph real estate market. Maybe. And as often happens with news events, maybe they're nervous about the Canadian economy. Maybe they're nervous about getting into early because they're thinking that maybe prices will decline further, which in some segments I agree they will. Maybe they're nervous about the US headlines that continue to dominate every single day. Um, there could be any number of reasons. It's not necessarily just. Buying a house in East Guelph. There are so many different psychological factors that play into buying a home that, even as a seller, sometimes you can't cater to. There's not really much you can do about someone who's nervous about buying a house if you're a seller. I mean, unless you drop the price by 50%. But of course that won't happen. So it's an interesting time for sure. One of the things that I expected to happen was that we would get a number of cancellations in December, which we did, and we would also get a lot of naturally expiring contracts on December 31st. And that's just a formality. Usually they're just renewed in early January, but it doesn't really appear to be the case at all. Um, in early December. So, uh, you know, six weeks ago, there were 193 detached on the market. And here we are now mid January, and we're at 1.75. So we're actually in net decline versus early December. And there were 233 condos on the market in mid-December. And we are now at 201, so about a 15% decrease. So the message here is that the other strange thing, besides the fact that buyers aren't really buying anything, is that sellers at this point in the month, mid January, have yet to come back and their houses aren't listed, and we aren't even at levels now that we saw in early to mid-December. So very weird things going on, I think in the market right now, and there's a lot of hesitation on both sides, both buyers and sellers. The question is really, I guess, are those sellers going to just give up? Are they now deciding that because they couldn't sell it for the price they wanted, or the terms they wanted in December, or that their contract expired at the end of December, that they're just going to pause on it or maybe not do anything, maybe just not move. Uh, there's probably a portion of those, but I suspect that most people who went through the effort of getting their house ready probably want to sell it. So they're going to come back. The question is when I would. Well, and we have suggested to our clients that if you're going to get out there and list your house, you probably want to beat what people would normally perceive to be the spring market. Uh, because if everybody comes on the market at Spring Market and we continue at this level of very low buyer levels, it's going to mean a glut in inventory, and it's going to mean lower prices because buyers will have so much choice, more choice than they have now. And they're negotiating hard now. Okay, so let's get into some specifics. As I mentioned, there were 17 sills so far in the first half of January, which seems super low to me. But that's those are the facts, folks. Uh, 17 sales and, um, nine of them are in the freehold segment. So, um, we have a low of 590,000 detached on Dell High Street and General Hospital, and we have a high of 1,000,140 on Lowland Lane that is in, um, Pine Ridge. So overall, the average um, is 757,000. This is back where we saw it in early December. At the end of December, it bumped up to 828. Earlier in 2025 it was close to 900,000. So we've made a big move downwards. Of course, an average is just a mix. It doesn't mean that every house price is now declining. It just means that the overall mix is changing. And, uh, you know, we're now selling houses in General Hospital for under 600,000. Um, there's only $1 million house so far. Um, and of the 17, um, that would mean that it is 6% of the total sales over a million bucks. We've been watching this, um, and. Between 10 to 15% every month was historically going to happen over $1 million, or now at 6% for January. We were at 7% in December, and I think we were at 13, if I can remember correctly, for November. So I think we're seeing something new here. There's a message in these numbers that, um, I'm going to follow up on for everybody at the end of January, because I think we've gone in a new direction and there are less and less homes selling over $1 million. Um, for two reasons. One of them is probably they are just not selling as well or selling. It takes longer, the whole process, but two naturally prices, you know, a home that was worth $1 million a year ago is now not worth that anymore. So it's just not selling at that price. So we're seeing a natural move downwards. Like I said, I'll keep an eye on that. Um, overall homes here sold. Um, at about 97% of the asking price, is a little bit lower than we've seen. Um, this is the versus the last asking price or the most recent list price. Um, it usually was in the high 97. So we've seen a little bit of a move down here. Nothing here. Sold at the asking or above. Um, everything was between 92 and 98% of the asking price. So there is some negotiation happening. Really is the message. Um, with this few sales, there are some sellers that must sell. If you can imagine, there are some people that are in a position where, for whatever reason, they've already bought another house. They want to move to another country. They have the bank coming after them. Any number of reasons why someone may need to sell a house, but that's never disclosed. So you may happen to stumble upon somebody who needs to negotiate a little more than someone else. And you know, we do have a low here where somebody sold at 92.6% of the asking price for whatever reason. Um. The overall message here is that things are moving. There's always somebody that needs to move. It's just a lot less than we've seen. If we move over to the condo segment. We had eight sales here. The low was a townhouse at 539 Willow. That would be at the corner of Willow and Westwood, and we have a high in the arboretum of 875. And that was a unit that had been on the market for quite a while. Um, and now has soul. So the overall, um, average here we've been we were bumping up at about 600,000 earlier last year. It made a move down probably in October and it hasn't recovered since. And again, the numbers in January are reflecting that 535 is the average so far this month. And uh, we're looking at about 94.9 as the percentage of the last list price. So definitely some negotiation, more negotiation happening in condos than we've seen in the detached segment as well. So, uh, lots of negotiation going on. One of the metrics in the condo segment that we always watch are the sales per day. These were at 1.6 ish, um, in July, and we had about 230 houses on the market now. So far this month we were at about 0.6 per day. So it was 1.6. It's now 0.6. So half a unit per day. Just over half a unit per day. Uh, and we have 201 units. So I suspect that either something has to give the buyers have to pick up the volume and move that back up to one per day, or there has to be less houses on the market. But, uh, we are in a position in condos where I think we're still going to see some pressure on prices and on supply. We are now in a position where there are quite a few of the homes that are vacant. For whatever reason, the owner has moved out, decided not to rent. It, has moved on to their new house because they couldn't sell for what they wanted to before they moved. But we are looking at about 42% of condos on the market today are listed as vacant, and 39% of detached homes are listed as vacant. This is currently, as of right now, on the Guelph real estate markets. And as some of our colleagues probably expected, we did take a look at whether vacant properties in 2025 sold for less than those that had someone living in them. And we're not talking about furnished versus unfurnished, we're just simply talking about if the property was marked as vacant, if a showing could be booked for a very short lead time, and the buyers and the buyer's agent knew it was vacant, did it sell for less? The answer was actually no. A vacant property did not sell for any less statistically than a property that was owner occupied. So if you do have to leave and put your property on the market vacant, don't worry about expecting less. In fact, in some cases it's the benefit because it can be shown on a quick lead time. There are very few restrictions and um, buyers tend to be a little more. Believe it or not, receptive to a vacant property because they're not in someone's space. Um, they know that they can negotiate, and sometimes it's a bit of a catalyst for an offer. Okay, folks, that's all for today. If you have any questions on the Guelph real estate market, of course you can always visit us on our website and book an appointment. You can email us at info@bethandryan.ca and will get back to you with any questions, any answers to the questions that you may have. Talk to you soon.