55 Days to Sell a Condo: What Nine Extra Days Actually Cost

Days on market is almost always presented as a reading of market temperature. It is also, and more concretely, a bill. As long as a property has not sold, its owner keeps paying for it, every day. Converting time into dollars is the only way to weigh waiting against a price concession, because it puts both in the same unit. For the state of the segment in July, see our read of the Montreal condo market in July 2026.

Nine days, and the segment stretching most

The QPAREB release of August 6, 2026 gives the three selling times for the Montreal census metropolitan area in July 2026. Single-family homes sold in 38 days, three more than a year earlier. Plexes sold in 46 days, eight fewer. Condos sold in 55 days, nine more.

Condos are therefore both the slowest segment in level and the one stretching most in change. They are also the segment where supply grows fastest: condominium inventory rose 20% year over year, against 14% for plexes and 13% for single-family homes. The link is direct. More simultaneous options for one buyer means more time before each seller meets theirs.

What keeps running while a unit is listed

Six line items make up the carrying cost of a listed condo. Mortgage interest, the dominant share as long as the loan balance is high. Condo fees, charged monthly whatever the unit's status. Municipal and school taxes. Home insurance. Electricity and minimum heating, needed to keep the unit presentable and above freezing. And, where applicable, a special assessment voted by the syndicate during the period.

None of these six respond to how many showings you get or how a negotiation is going. They accumulate at the same rate on day one and on day fifty-five. That insensitivity is exactly what makes them computable in advance, and therefore usable inside a decision.

The calculation, on a working assumption

Take a deliberately round assumption, chosen to illustrate the method rather than to stand for any published median. A mortgage balance of 250,000 dollars at 4.5% produces roughly 11,250 dollars of interest over twelve months. Condo fees of 350 dollars a month come to 4,200 dollars. Municipal and school taxes of 3,000 dollars, insurance of 600 dollars and 900 dollars of electricity round out the picture. The annual total reaches 19,950 dollars, or about 55 dollars a day.

Over 55 days on market that comes to close to 3,000 dollars. The nine extra days versus last year are worth, on their own, a little under 500 dollars. Everyone will need to redo this with their own numbers, and the order of magnitude swings hard on the loan balance: mortgage interest drives the result, and a small balance changes the conclusion entirely.

Weighing a wait against a concession

The number earns its keep the moment an offer looks too low. Turning down an offer 5,000 dollars below list is not a choice between 5,000 dollars and nothing. It is a choice between 5,000 dollars today and 5,000 dollars later, minus the cost of carrying the unit in between.

At 55 dollars a day, those 5,000 dollars are worth roughly 90 days of waiting. The question becomes checkable rather than emotional: is a higher offer reasonably likely in the next three months, given that the segment's selling time is 55 days and inventory is up 20%? The calculation does not answer that question. It frames it correctly, which is already a great deal.

The two-property trap

The arithmetic changes scale for a seller who has already bought. They are no longer carrying one property but two, and the daily cost adds up rather than substitutes. In that configuration, nine extra days on the segment average stops being a statistical nuance and becomes a budget line that doubles.

It is also the situation where the trade-off tilts most clearly toward accepting a fair offer rather than holding out for an ideal one. A seller with no calendar constraint can afford to wait. A seller paying twice a day does not have the same cost function, and ought to know it before declining rather than after.

What this calculation leaves out

Carrying cost is a floor, not a full appraisal. It ignores two effects that both point the same way. The first is the decay of an ageing listing: a property advertised for a long stretch attracts lower offers regardless of its value. The second is the opportunity cost of the capital locked in the equity, which earns nothing while you wait.

Both push toward deciding rather than waiting, which means a carrying cost computed as above understates the real price of time. That is a reason to compute it anyway: a quantified floor beats an intuition, and it is usually enough to settle the question.