Some companies are staging condo apartments to help attract buyers to completed unsold units.Baker Real Estate Inc.
Toronto’s new condominium market continues to underperform, but a combination of repricing and creativity could begin to drain away some of the overstocked inventory of finished but unsold apartments.
In addition to federal and provincial government plans to create sales-tax relief for buyers of new homes, old techniques from the resale side of the industry are setting the stage to entice buyers back into the market.
“We’re going back to good old days where you stage units, and you do open houses, and we’re selling,” said Harley Nakelsky, president with Baker Real Estate Inc., in Toronto. “My resale division is killing it.”
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Baker has long been one of the top companies in the market for preconstruction sales, specializing in selling from plans and sales centres. But as the market shifts, Baker is finding it has more completed apartments to sell, requiring a shift of emphasis, and that includes staging: Paying professionals to decorate and furnish an unsold apartment so buyers are not confronted with blank walls and empty rooms.
“Your general seller today is not staging units,” said Mr. Nakelsky, and a quick look at sites like Realtor.ca will show a bevy of new, empty apartments for sale.
In its report on the first quarter of 2026, Zonda Urban called techniques such as staging “old school.” It reported the practice has returned to the new condo sales market, along with price cuts and amenities that once came as price upgrades, such as lockers and parking spots. There are more than 2,358 unsold and completed apartments in Toronto buildings that began selling in 2020 according to Zonda, while sales per month are hovering around only a couple of hundred units.
An example can be found at 28 Eastern Ave., a mid-rise project from builder Alterra that began selling in 2020. Mr. Nakelsky recalls it was one of the early new sales openings after the lockdowns from COVID-19, and Baker sold out 90 per cent of the units. The building was finished in 2025, but today 30 units in the 12-storey, 378-unit building remain unsold. It’s a common scenario, with Zonda reporting an average of 13 per cent of units go unsold in recently completed buildings, a dramatic increase from a year ago when the share was just 3 per cent.
Several units in the 28 Eastern Ave. building were staged to show potential buyers, including unit 527, shown.Baker Real Estate Inc.
When buyers call to get a tour of 28 Eastern’s unsold units, it’s typically Sharon Edwards, a salesperson with Baker, who answers the bell to show off the half-dozen staged suites in the building. She starts with a tour of the amenities (co-working and children’s play areas, party rooms and gym) and tries to suss out what their budget is, but she finds it’s unhelpful to show a buyer all the various units. Like having too many menu items at a restaurant, the profusion of choice can overwhelm.
She also finds that buyers really benefit from the staging.
“Nobody knows the size of a queen-size bed, you know what I mean? They think that it takes up more space than it does until you actually see it in place,” Ms. Edwards said. She noted that furnishings can actually make a space feel bigger.
The staging furniture is mainly natural wood with light beige or grey fabrics, contemporary in style but not modernist. The stagers didn’t go for bold moves that grab attention, aiming to create a modest but upscale feeling in what would otherwise be white boxes, often with loft-style concrete ceilings. “The thing that always makes me laugh is that people say ‘I’m a visual person,’ and I’m like, ‘No, you’re actually a literal person because you literally need to see everything in its place,’” said Ms. Edwards.
She has been hosting two open houses a month at the building, and gets a half-dozen groups coming through on open houses, even on a slow day.
The promise of the harmonized sales tax credit, which in some cases can create remarkable savings, is also helping get buyers in the door.
“Throw in an extra 13-per-cent discount, and we had people who rescinded on a deal, and they are all showing up again,” said Mr. Nakelsky. “We’re reselling a bunch of units.”
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In 2020, Baker was selling apartments priced around $1,200 per square foot at 28 Eastern. Today, many of the units are priced at or below $1,000 per square foot, more if you include the rebate. A three-bedroom apartment with 918 square feet would have cost well over $1-million a few years back, but today Baker’s listing it for about $850,000 (without parking), or about $925 per square foot. Mr. Nakelsy points out that if you qualify for the 13-per-cent HST discount, you could get that apartment for under $800,000, which would have been a cut-rate deal in any of the previous 10 years.
There’s even a studio apartment for under $400,000 in the building, another price virtually unheard of during the peak of the boom.
These price cuts are likely unwelcome news to those buyers who paid more to buy preconstruction a few years ago, and that’s why, according to Zonda analyst Pauline Lierman, the typical practice is for developers not to cut prices on unsold inventory until the building completes registration and the majority of preconstruction buyers have finished their purchases.
“There’s a lot of price shifting once a project is registered,” she said, noting that there are 32 more buildings in the Toronto region nearing completion over the course of 2026.