Where Ontario Buyers Have Negotiating Room
Two numbers, read together: how often homes sell below the original asking price, and — when they do — how big the gap typically is. Both are measured against the first asking price of the relisting chain, so a seller who relisted lower does not hide the concession.
- Report period
- 2026 Q2
- Status
- REVISED
- Eligible sales
- 36,197
- Methodology
- v1.1 · full notes
Finalized August 27, 2026 — these figures are frozen and will not change without a visible revision note.
Analyst commentary — 2026 Q2
Commentary for this report period has not been published yet. The figures on this page come straight from the finalized snapshot data above.
Deepest Typical Discounts — 2026 Q2
Median discount among homes that sold below original asking. Ontario overall: 5.0% (on the 77.0% of sales that closed below the original ask).
| City | Median discount | Eligible sales |
|---|---|---|
| 1Petawawa | 2.1% | 133 |
| 2Thunder Bay | 3.1% | 87 |
| 3North Grenville | 3.4% | 82 |
| 4Port Hope | 3.4% | 59 |
| 5Carleton Place | 3.5% | 72 |
| 6Pembroke | 3.6% | 59 |
| 7Ottawa | 3.7% | 3,250 |
| 8Kingston | 3.7% | 482 |
| 9Timmins | 3.7% | 133 |
| 10Woodstock | 3.7% | 209 |
Cities below the disclosure floor are excluded — sample sizes shown per city. Full table, every metric and every city: open the interactive index.
The Context Behind the Discount
A deep median discount means little if almost nothing sells below asking — and a shallow one means little if everything does. These four figures frame the leverage picture.
Where Buyer Leverage Is Growing — or Shrinking
Biggest changes in the share of homes selling below original asking.
Year-over-year movement will appear here once the index has a full year of finalized quarters behind this one — the series starts in Q3 2025.
What These Numbers Can — and Can't — Tell You
The median discount is conditional: it describes the typical gap among homes that actually sold below asking, not an amount any buyer can expect to knock off any listing. A well-priced home in a “high-discount” city may still sell at ask in days. Negotiating room concentrates in listings that started too high — the price-reductions report shows where those are, and the sale-to-list guide explains how to size up an individual listing.
Leverage also depends on time: markets where many homes sit past 60 days give buyers room that fast markets simply don't — check the speed ranking for the same cities before drawing conclusions.
Keep exploring
- Ontario Market Heat Index
The full interactive index — every city, metric, period and property type.
- Guide: Sale-to-list price ratio
Turning ratios into a realistic offer strategy on a specific home.
- Price reductions report
Where overpriced listings are being marked down — the raw material of leverage.
- Where homes sell above asking
The markets where negotiating room is scarcest.
- Guide: Original vs final asking price
Why we measure discounts against the first ask, not the last.
- Browse Ontario listings
See current homes for sale in the markets ranked above.