130 new listings came on. 237 came off. If you've been waiting for the fall to bring you more choice, the fall is going the other way.
There's a house you've had saved since June. Fenced yard, finished basement, a driveway that fits both cars without one of you doing the shuffle every morning. You weren't ready to move on it. You wanted to see if the price softened, wanted to see what came up in September, wanted one more paycheque between you and a bigger mortgage. That's a reasonable way to think about the biggest purchase of your life.
Last week it disappeared off your saved list, and it didn't sell, it just came down.
Ninety of those happened in Waterloo Region last week under the label "cancelled," another seven expired, and two were suspended. Ninety-nine homes total, and not one of them found a buyer. In the same seven days, 138 homes actually closed and only 130 new ones came on.
Add it up and the list of homes you can physically go look at shrank by about 97 in a single week.
The week, all of it
| What happened | Count |
|---|---|
| New listings | 130 |
| Back on market | 10 |
| Conditional | 64 |
| Pending | 82 |
| Closed | 138 |
| Price decrease | 49 |
| Price increase | 13 |
| Suspended | 2 |
| Expired | 7 |
| Cancelled | 90 |
Two hundred and thirty-seven homes stopped being available last week. A hundred and thirty-eight of those stopped because somebody bought them. The other 99 stopped because the seller had enough.
That's roughly four out of every ten exits. Nobody counts those, because a cancelled listing doesn't get reported anywhere the way a sold one does. You just stop seeing the sign.
What actually happens to those 99
Some of them come back. Ten homes went back on the market last week, which is usually a seller switching agents or finally agreeing to the price their agent suggested three months ago. Those are the ones worth watching, because a seller who has already lived through one failed listing is a very different person to negotiate with than one who listed on Thursday.
Some of them stay off until spring. A family decides they'll try again in March when the flowers are up and the photos look better, and they list again at a number they feel better about, not a number the market agreed to.
And some of them never come back at all. They renovate, they refinance, they stay.
None of those three outcomes puts that house back on your saved list this fall at a lower price. That's the whole point.
Meanwhile, 49 sellers did the other thing
Forty-nine sellers dropped their price last week. Thirteen raised theirs. Almost four cuts for every increase.
That gap is where the real market lives. The sellers who cut are the ones who listened, and they're the ones worth your attention, because the homes that sold in July still got 100.2 percent of asking on average. This market will pay a fair number in full. What it won't do is negotiate with a wishful one, it just lets the days pile up until the seller gives up.
The year-over-year picture backs it up
July's regional numbers say the same thing the week says, just slower.
| July 2026, all residential | This year | Last year | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| New listings | 1,158 | 1,355 | -14.5% |
| Sales | 579 | 646 | -10.4% |
| Homes for sale | 1,927 | 2,128 | -9.4% |
| Months supply | 3.9 | 4.0 | -2.5% |
| Median sale price | $675,000 | $695,000 | -2.9% |
| Percent of list received | 100.2% | 100.9% | -0.7% |
| Days on market | 33 | 32 | +3.1% |
For single family homes specifically, which is what most families upsizing here are actually shopping for, the median came in at $760,000, down 3.4 percent from last July, with 1,012 homes for sale and 3.2 months of supply. Sellers who sold got 100.3 percent of asking, and it took 30 days on average.
The honest trade-off
If you'd bought a median-priced home in Waterloo Region last July, you'd have paid $695,000. This July, $675,000. Waiting a year saved you $20,000.
In that same year, the number of homes available to buy dropped from 2,128 to 1,927. Waiting cost you 201 choices.
That's the trade, plainly. Twenty thousand dollars against 201 houses. If the exact right home for your family, the one with the school catchment and the yard and the layout that finally works, is somewhere in that missing 201, then the twenty grand wasn't a discount. It was the price of a smaller menu.
And it isn't a market crash you're waiting out. Three point nine months of supply with homes selling at full asking is a market doing normal business. Prices have eased, choice has eased more.
What I'd actually do
Stop watching the fresh listings, or at least stop only watching those. Everyone else is fighting over what came on Thursday.
Watch the 49 that cut. Watch the 10 that came back. And if there's a house you've been circling since June, find out what it's actually doing before it becomes one of the 99. Sometimes the answer is that it's overpriced and you should let it go. Sometimes the seller has a closing date in October and nobody's told you.
That's a five minute conversation, not a listing presentation. If you want me to pull the real history on a specific address, what it's been listed at, how many times, and what similar homes have actually closed for on that street, send me the link and I'll tell you straight, including when the answer is "keep waiting."
George Dmitrovic
Data source: ITSO, Waterloo Region Monthly Indicators, July 2026, provided by the Cornerstone Association of REALTORS®. Weekly activity counts cover the seven days ending August 16, 2026, and reflect all residential property types in the Waterloo Region board area.
