The Guelph Market Isn’t Crashing… But Something Is Changing | Ep 37

Sales are down. Inventory is rising. Buyers are negotiating again.

So what’s actually happening in the Guelph real estate market?

In this episode, Ryan Waller breaks down the April 2026 numbers, explains why the market feels slower than normal, and shares why he believes Guelph could move closer to a buyer’s market later this year.

Topics include:

•  April sales and pricing trends 
•  Detached vs condo performance 
•  Why some homes still attract aggressive buyers 
•  Which segments are weakening fastest 
•  The condo market outlook 
•  Why inventory levels matter more than headlines 
•  Predictions for summer and fall 2026 

Plus: which homes Ryan believes are still excellent properties to sell right now.

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

Transcript

April 2026 full month Guelph real estate sales

 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! Hey everyone and welcome back to the Guelph Real Estate Report Podcast. This is episode number 37. My name is Ryan Waller and I worked in Guelph real estate with my lovely wife, Beth. April is done and April is the first of the big three. April, May and June make up over half the sales in the Guelph real estate market on an annual basis. So this is an important time in the real estate market here, which can make or break a full year just because it is so heavily weighted in these three months. So we're going to look at how April performed, where that puts us on a year to date basis and some interesting. Well, hopefully you find some interesting facts about the golf real estate market and, uh, some of the things that we're watching out for. But first, just a thank you to everyone who has tuned in in the past and still tuning in. We have just passed the 1000 download mark. And who knew that people would be interested in a golf real estate podcast? I don't know who a lot of the listeners are. I know who some of them are, and we just appreciate the fact that you've taken the time to listen to this. This is the only golf real estate podcast that's ongoing that as far as far as I know anyways. And the goal is to help people become more informed on the market and give unbiased information. So reaching into the Real Estate Podcast mailbag, we have Brett, who sent us a message saying that at some point in the eight minute mark of our last episode, music started blaring out. And I don't know how that happened, but I'll try not to let it happen again. Uh, Krista, who sent us a message on Instagram saying she's a new listener and appreciates the honest take, which we appreciate that feedback. And to Andrew and Larissa, who are currently overseas and moving to the Royal City. Happy to work with you and everyone else who may be out there, anybody who needs help or insights who have questions, always feel free to get in touch. Now into April, we had 139 sales, of which 96 of them were in the detached segment and the remaining 43 were in the condo and townhouse segment. Overall, we had um, 4.6 sales per day that is below the last five years. The last five years ranged from 4.9 all the way up to 7.1. Uh, so we rolled in slightly below at 4.6. Um, the only April that was slower was, of course, April of 2020, our first full month of Covid where nobody was doing anything. Uh, we are definitely above that number. We were saved a bit by the last week of April. Um, mainly between the 22nd and 30th. The month was pretty sluggish. Uh, it was a bit concerning when I was watching the numbers roll in, but the trends certainly changed at the end of the month and brought us up to that 4.6, and it became really a regular April at that point. But it didn't happen until the very end. Uh, the overall average price in April was 746,000, and that was made up of the sales in detached, as mentioned, 96 at 849,000. And the condo and townhouse segment 43 sales averaged 516,000. So those two together overall average 746,000, which puts us in a mid-range. We've ranged anywhere from low 700 up to 800. So we're right in the middle of the range. And so with April in, we can take a look at our year to date numbers. So from January 1st until April 30th of 2026 versus the same period last year, uh, the number of homes sold is down 12%. That is, 65 less houses have sold in 2026, the dollar volume. So if you add up all of the sale prices of homes this year versus last is down 17%. That's 328 million in sales this year versus 3.97 last year. And the last metric is the average price. And average price is interesting because despite the fact that the number of homes sold and the dollar volume sold is down double digits, the average price has only declined 5% 744,000 so far this year versus 7.85 last year. So we are down in all the metrics. Um, and um, I think that in April, May and June, we're going to pick up a little bit of that. Um, and we'll talk a little bit about how May is rolling up so far into the first week, but, uh, it is. I suspect going to be more of this for the next little while. More of close to last year, but not quite at last year. Type numbers. Okay, so let's break down what we had that sold in April. Give you a little more detail into the two segments. The two segments we always talk about are detached homes semi-detached, although there aren't many, um, fall into this. So this is the freehold category. And um, in this segment, uh, we had 96 sales. As mentioned, 515,000 was the low that was in Exhibition Park. And in fact, there were actually a couple that sold in the 500 seconds in Exhibition Park in April, and the high was 1350, 1.35 million in old University and old university at this price point, seems to have a number of homes that are selling in this range too. So on both ends of the spectrum, there seems to be, um, some demand for similar type homes. As I mentioned earlier, the overall average 849,000. That's the midpoint of what we've been seeing over the last year. Homes sold at an average of 98% of their last listed asking price, and that's really nothing surprising. It means there's a little bit of wiggle room less than if you were buying a condo, but there is still a little wiggle room at 12 of the 96 sold over the asking price, eight sold at the asking price. So between those two, that makes up one fifth of the total sales 20% and the remaining, uh, sales that happened in detached 80% of them sold under the asking price, um. Is now a good time to sell. We get this question all the time. Uh, if you have a detached house and you are selling one of these two things I think we have demand for, if you are selling a detached home between, I'd say 900,001.2 million in downtown Guelph or any of the immediate downtown surrounding neighborhoods. So that would be Exhibition Park, Saint George's Park, uh, the Ward and old University. Uh, there is definitely demand for those. Uh, just because there have been so few that when they come out, buyers all flock to them. And, um, sometimes buyers are fearful that they won't get a chance for another while to buy another one. So they are willing to be a little more aggressive. So if you have one of those, it is a great time to sell out. Again, we always talk about bungalows, uh, specifically the post-war bungalows that you can find, uh, probably about a kilometer or two out of the downtown core, uh, built in the mid 50s to early 60s. These are always in demand because they have such a large buyer pool. First time buyers downsize investors. Everybody likes them. So that's why they tend to go quickly when they come up. So if you have that segment or you have a house in around downtown between 900 and 1.2, you should consider selling. If you're thinking now or some other time later this year. Now is a great time. I'm not sure if it'll get better or worse later, but in the moment it is a great time. Um, we have about three months inventory. Sitting in the detached segment puts us in about a balanced market. Um, this is the stable. The more stable of the two segments. Uh, it is less volatile in price. And as we get slowly, uh, slow declines in price, these become more attractive because there are still many condos that are now starting to, um, bleed into the lower end, detached. So if you have a $600,000 condo, uh, the likelihood of you finding a $600,000 detached house right now is starting to happen. And so, um, many people, when given the the choice, they would rather have the detached house and no condo fees than a condo at the same price with fees. Um, it's not right or wrong. It's just the preference of the general public when two things come together at the same price. If we look to the condo segment, we have seen a bit of life here, and the condo segment for the longest time was selling just under or AD one unit per day, and the condo segment is anything with a fee. So that is a condo apartment, a condo townhouse, a regular townhouses, stacked townhouses, anything that has a monthly fee, and a condo corporation. There were 43 that sold in April, which puts us over one per day. And it's a bit of life that we've seen, too. Um, 255,000 was the low price. That was a low rise building in Dover Cliff. I think it was on Conroy. And 1,000,017 was the high that was a condo downtown Guelph. Overall average here 519,000. This is trending towards the low end of what we've seen over the past year. We've seen anywhere between 500 to 600,000. So at 519 we're trending towards the lower end. But it has stabilized here. We saw this last, um, the last update we did a few weeks ago. Homes here sold an average of 98%. Uh, again, there is still some negotiation that happens. Um. 24% of the condos that sold in the past month sold at or above the asking price, and the remaining 76% or 33 sold under the asking price. So it does appear there's a bit of a life coming here. I'm not sure whether it's seasonality or whether it's, um, buyer demand. Maybe buyers are seeing that prices are getting to the point where they're becoming really attractive or, and, or sellers are starting to react to, um, market pricing and bringing them down to a level where a transaction is happening. Uh, is it a good time to buy a condo in town? Well, I think it's going to get better. If you are considering buying a condo. Uh, I would wait for a little bit longer simply because we believe this segment has a little further to fall before it becomes attractive. And I think in May and June, we're going to see a lot of inventory. Those are the highest volume inventory months. And I don't think that we're going to see the corresponding number of buyers coming out. So we're going to build inventory. I think over the next few months. The summer months are always a little sluggish. And so I think we may see a little bit of life in the condo market, uh, into September. But I think between now and September, uh, if you were thinking about buying, you might just want to hold out for another start, another month or two, maybe start looking now, but check out your options. You might want to wait a little bit longer to pull the trigger. I'm not going to bore you with all the details, but the last thing I want to touch on is what type of market we're in. Um. You can be under two months and be a seller's market, and between 2 to 4 months inventory, you have a balanced market and six plus months of inventory. Is a buyer's market. The full calculation of how I get there is on the blog version of this. I won't bore you with those details, but in summary, we are sitting at 4.1 months of inventory, which puts us dead in the middle of a buyer and seller market, which means typical negotiations are happening. In fact, from many people's perspective, we're in an ideal state. We're right in the very middle. Lots of room to negotiate on both sides, and typical market conditions exist. I do think as we see a rise in inventory in May and June, which we always do, I think we're going to see less buyers in July and August, which means the inventory will stick around and we will get some more inventory from July and August listings. I think that we are going to move closer to a buyer's market by the end of summer. I initially thought it was going to happen. Now I've moved that I think until maybe July or August. That's not everything. That's not every type of property out there. Um, but I do think we're going to have a glut of inventory come the fall. In the next episode, I'm going to talk about three things that you should be doing right now. If you're buying a house and three things you should be doing right now if you are selling a house and this is, of course, a Guelph podcast, but it would apply to the outlying markets and many other markets as well. Based on the type of market we're in in the moment, and if we can help you make some better decisions, we would be happy to do that. So tune in to the next episode. Talk to you soon.