Condos: 62 Days to Sell and a Median Price Up 4% in the Same Month

In August 2026, in the Montreal census metropolitan area, condos took 62 days to sell, 12 more than a year earlier, and the segment's median price rose 4%. The first reaction is that one of those numbers must be wrong. Both are accurate, and the explanation lies in what each one measures. We put a dollar figure on what a longer selling time costs a seller per day elsewhere; this piece is not about the cost of time, it is about the population the price median leaves outside its frame.

The segment's three numbers

Data published by APCIQ on September 4, 2026 gives, for condos in the Montreal census metropolitan area: a selling time of 62 days, up 12 days year over year; supply up 19%; and a median price up 4%. The release also places island condos at the boundary between a balanced market and a buyer's market.

The first two belong together: more supply, more time to sell. It is the third that jars. A segment taking two extra weeks to clear its inventory should, intuitively, see prices give way. So it is worth looking at what the median actually counts.

A median only measures what sold

This is the central point, and it is simpler than it sounds. A price median is calculated on closed transactions. It takes the month's sales, sorts them, and keeps the middle one. Every property that did not find a buyer is, by construction, absent from the calculation.

Selling time does not describe that same population. It reports on the conditions facing all listed properties, in a market where supply grew 19%. Two indicators, two populations: the price describes the month's winners, the selling time describes the playing field.

The consequence is sharp. If the hardest units to clear are precisely the ones still listed, the median of closed sales describes the most favourable slice of the market. It can rise even as the whole loosens, not because prices are advancing, but because the selection of what completes has shifted. Nothing in the published figures settles between those two explanations, which is reason enough not to conclude too quickly in either direction.

Asking price and closed price are different objects

The distinction gets lost in everyday language and costs money when a price is being set. An asking price is a request. It commits nobody, it results from no agreement, and it can sit there for months without ever becoming data. A closed sale price is the point at which a buyer and a seller agreed, often after negotiation.

The published median covers the second kind. A 4% rise in it therefore says nothing about how asking prices are moving among those who have not yet sold. A seller who reads that rise as permission to raise their asking price is using a measurement of closed sales to justify a decision about a listing. Those are two different objects.

What downtown shows at the same moment

The release adds an element pointing the same way. Downtown and the Sud-Ouest reached their highest listing levels ever recorded, and condo prices there are flat.

That configuration is worth naming because it is counterintuitive. Two sectors can accumulate supply to an unprecedented level without their prices falling. Inventory accumulation and price movement are therefore not synchronised: the first can hit records while the second sits still. A price that does not give way is not proof the market is holding; it can equally mean sellers have not adjusted yet, and that those refusing to adjust simply are not closing.

What this piece does not claim

It does not claim the 4% rise is an artefact. A median can rise because the selection of what completes has shifted, and it can also rise because prices genuinely went up. Both mechanisms are consistent with the published figures, and nothing here attributes a share to one rather than the other.

Nor does it put a number on what time costs. That is the subject of our carrying-cost piece, which converts a longer selling time into dollars per day and weighs waiting against a price concession. The two readings are complementary and do not overlap: that one answers whether to wait, this one answers what the median describes.

What a condo seller does with it

The useful question is not whether prices are rising. It is whether your unit resembles the ones that are closing. In a segment whose selling time stretched by 12 days and whose supply grew 19%, the gap widens between units that find a buyer and units that stay, and that is where the decision sits.

Three local checks say it better than a regional median. Which comparable units actually sold in your immediate area over recent months. How long they took. And at what closed price, not at what asking price. If recent sales in your area resemble your unit, the median concerns you. If they have nothing in common with it, the 4% describes somebody else's market.