Here's the lowest salary you need to afford a home in Toronto right now

Toronto's housing market may still be taking a prolonged (and for many, extremely stressful) pause, but a lack of momentum doesn't mean that real estate in and around the city is getting any more affordable.

Local firms like Ratehub.ca have been regularly reporting on average home prices in the region and the income needed to cover them each month, and June's data still spells out what most locals have come to accept over the years: that hell may indeed freeze over before owning a home is as attainable here as in comparable cities around the world.

Based on Ratehub's latest data, released Friday, a slight increase in lending rates month-over-month has worsened affordability in almost all of Canada's major markets, compounded by the fact that prices are slowly starting to rise again as would-be buyers give up waiting on the sidelines for costs to potentially improve.

As the company explains, "upward pressure has been steadily building under fixed mortgage rates in recent weeks, as bond yields have ticked higher in response to economic data, and ongoing trade war volatility."

But, despite this being the case for 12 of 13 of the metropolises the mortgage experts assessed, Toronto — perennially known as the nation's most exorbitant place for real estate aside from Vancouver — surprisingly bucked the trend.

The annual salary required to float a mortgage for the average home in the city actually fell last month to $204,840, from $206,500 in May.

While this is a difference of only $1,660, any amount of savings is good news for buyers, especially when Toronto is the only major locale in the country to see better affordability from one month to the next. It also reflects a drop of $17,700 in the mean home price in the area, which Ratehub calls "massive."

Chart from Ratehub.ca's latest Affordability Report.

For the first time in what feels like ages, the brokerage is reporting that the typical price of a home in T.O., across housing types and sizes, is now under $1 million for the first time in what feels like ages.

But, the firm predicts that the days of softer home prices anywhere in Canada are numbered.

"The most recent June data from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) revealed home sales continued to recover over the course of the month, rising 3.5 per cent year-over-year. While the average price overall dipped slightly compared to 2024, that varied between regional markets, with many experiencing an uptick," it writes.

"Most housing markets continued to turn a corner in June, although market conditions still vary considerably depending on where you are in Canada. If the spring market was mostly held back by economic uncertainty, barring any further big shocks, that delayed activity could very likely surface this summer and into the fall."