These 4 Toronto-area cities saw home prices drop by over $200k in the last year

Home prices have been on the decline across much of Canada since successive lending rate hikes brought the soaring housing markets crashing down, and no province has been hit harder than Ontario.

A new report published by Zoocasa sheds light on evaporating home values across the country, including some severe price movement in Ontario, where one city's home prices have dropped by almost $275k in a year and a half.

In the 15-month period between March 2022 and April 2023, Ontario home prices have plummeted by 16.12 per cent — shaving an average of $174,300 off the average home price in the province.

When you dive deeper into the province's most populous region and its outlying areas, the declines in home prices are much more pronounced.

Among Canada's 16 major cities, the five with the most significant home price decline can all be found in Ontario, painting a troubling picture for the countless investors playing local markets. The worst of the bunch are Toronto and Hamilton–Burlington, with prices falling by $189,300 and $191,900, respectively.

Every city in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) experienced price decline during this period, however, some pockets of the region fared better than others.

All GTA municipalities saw varying degrees of price decline in the period between March 2022 and April 2023. Image by Zoocasa.

Markham homeowners got off pretty lucky, the average price in that city dropping just over one per cent, falling $15,243 to $1,418,021.

Toronto proper was the only other city in the GTA to avoid an average price decline exceeding $100k, but it was still pretty close as 416 home prices plummeted by $98,194 since March 2022.

However, home prices in smaller GTA markets suffered even greater declines in the face of runaway interest rate hikes.

The hardest hit of the bunch were four cities to register declines of over $200,000 since early 2022. Ajax, Brampton, Essa and Brock saw the most severe home price declines, but it was Brock that takes the crown for the single-worst home price decline in all of Canada.

Average home prices in that city fell by a staggering $273,350 since March 2022, losing almost 26 per cent of their total value.

In March 2022, it cost an average of $1,057,415 to purchase a home in Brock. A year and a half later, that same average sits at a shockingly-low $784,065