Toronto’s real estate market has been going through a long correction since February 2022. It’s been more than three and a half years now, and the impact of high interest rates and heavy mortgage payments is still being felt across the city and the GTA. A lot of homeowners have been forced to sell, and some simply couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments. As a result, we’ve seen a sharp rise in what’s known as “power of sale” properties, homes that are repossessed and sold by lenders when the owners default on their loans.
If you look at the data from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, the trend is pretty clear. Back in mid-2023, there were only about 90 power of sale listings each month. By the end of that year, the number had already doubled. Throughout 2024, the increase became more dramatic, around 460 in October and more than 550 by December. Moving into 2025, the numbers just kept growing: over 620 in April, 740 in July, and 780 in August. And here’s the most striking part: by the third week of September 2025, there were already 931 listings recorded. That’s more than double what we saw a year ago and about six times higher than in 2023. Right now, roughly three percent of all active listings in the GTA are power of sale homes.
When you look at specific cases, the scale of losses is eye-opening. A home in Woodbridge that sold for two million dollars in May 2022 was taken over by the bank and resold for just 1.45 million in July 2025 — that’s a loss of about $574,000. In Toronto itself, a house bought at the 2022 peak for 1.65 million went for just over a million this September, down more than $630,000. A Richmond Hill property that changed hands for 1.83 million ended up being sold under power of sale for 1.5 million after the new owner couldn’t sell it. And in Vaughan, a home that was originally bought for 2.1 million, listed over and over without any offers, was finally repossessed and sold for 1.64 million — a loss of nearly half a million. Even outside the GTA, in Niagara Falls, a home that once sold for 1.03 million went for just $735,000 this summer. These stories show how quickly rising borrowing costs and flat home prices have eroded equity for those who bought at the market’s peak.
This trend goes hand in hand with a sharp increase in mortgage delinquencies across Canada’s major banks. By the third quarter of 2025, the number of overdue or unpaid mortgages had jumped significantly. National Bank reported a 60% increase compared to last year. BMO was up 55%, TD 45%, RBC 40%, while Scotiabank and CIBC were each around 20%. It’s not just people with private or high-interest loans anymore, even clients with traditional bank mortgages are starting to fall behind.
Recent reports from RBC and CIBC also show that Toronto now has one of the highest default rates in the country. The 90-day delinquency rate has climbed to around 0.42%, compared to the national average of 0.31% and just 0.27% in Vancouver. A few years ago, those numbers were much lower when the housing market was booming. Now, in the GTA, the rate has pushed past 0.45%, suggesting that financial pressure on households is continuing to build.
Another shift that’s happening behind the scenes is where these power of sale homes are coming from. A few years ago, most were tied to private lenders and alternative financing, people who took on higher-interest loans outside of the major banks. But that’s starting to change. According to MLS data, big banks have gone from being responsible for about 20% of power of sale listings in 2024 to nearly 29% in 2025. Private lenders and credit unions still make up the majority, but their share has dropped from almost 78% to around 70%. That tells us that it’s not just investors or riskier borrowers anymore — even regular homeowners with standard mortgages are getting caught in the wave.
Right now, Toronto accounts for more than one-third of all power of sale listings across Canada, and about half of them are condos. Many owners who bought during the 2022 boom are now facing huge losses as high interest rates meet lower property values. Not every homeowner will face foreclosure, of course, but the trend is a clear warning. Prolonged high borrowing costs don’t just affect new buyers — they ripple through the entire housing system. As we move toward the end of 2025, the hope is that more families can find a way to stay afloat, because as these examples show, once a property reaches the point of power of sale, the financial hit can be devastating.