Revised 2026 Outlook: Sales Down 6%, Single-Family Prices Up 5%

Back in February we published our 2026 price forecast for Quebec. Six months and two quarters later, it has been revised: sales volume down 6% across the year, while the single-family median price rises 5%. This is not a new forecast. It is the same trajectory recalibrated on real figures.

What was revised, and why it matters

An annual forecast published in February rests on assumptions, not transactions. It gets revised as quarters deliver their numbers, and that is exactly what has happened. The revision holds two figures: sales down 6% across 2026, and the single-family median price up 5%.

Those two numbers point in opposite directions, and that is the whole interest of the revision. The natural reflex is to assume a slowing market depreciates. The working scenario says the opposite: fewer transactions, with no loss of value.

Losing volume, gaining price: the mechanism

Volume and price do not measure the same thing. Volume counts households that could and wanted to transact. Price describes the balance between what is offered and what is sought within a given segment. Nothing forces the two to move together.

The link explaining the divergence is simple: a Quebec homeowner is almost never forced to sell. When demand softens, the choice is between cutting the price and pulling the property off the market. Most choose the second, or simply wait longer at the same price. The statistical result is mechanical: completed sales fall, but the ones that complete do so at levels that hold.

That mechanism has a limit worth naming: it holds as long as sellers can wait. It stops holding the moment a meaningful share of them faces a deadline. Nothing in the second-quarter data suggests that shift is under way.

The second quarter already validates the path

Last quarter's figures look like the annual forecast in miniature. Quebec recorded 27,296 sales, down 5%, while the single-family median reached $523,250, up 5%. The drop in volume and the rise in price are of the same order of magnitude, in opposite directions.

The Montreal metropolitan area amplifies the volume move, at 13,365 sales down 7%, while keeping a single-family median of $645,000 up 3%. The pullback is sharper there, the appreciation milder, but the direction is identical.

A third figure completes the picture: active listings up 14%. So more properties are available at the same time, without that abundance producing any price concession yet. It is the strongest argument in favour of the revised outlook: supply thickens and medians hold anyway.

What the revision does not claim

A provincial median forecast says nothing about your property. The 5% applies to single-family homes across Quebec: it aggregates markets that rise more and others that fall, tight segments and oversupplied ones. Nobody actually lives in the median.

It says nothing about other property types either. The revision explicitly covers single-family homes, not condominiums or plexes, whose dynamics clearly diverge in the second quarter. Applying the 5% to a condo would be a reading error.

Finally, a forecast remains a scenario. This one rests on the causes APCIQ names for the slowdown in volume: job losses among 25-54 year olds since the start of 2026, mortgage renewals at higher rates, and slower population growth. If any of those shifts materially, the trajectory will be revised again.

What it changes for a buyer, and for a seller

For a buyer, the reading is clear and mildly unwelcome: the working scenario is not a price decline. Waiting for 2027 hoping to pay less means betting against the forecast while the clock runs. What genuinely improves is choice. More available inventory means more comparisons and more room on conditions, occupancy dates and deadlines.

For a seller, value holds but the calendar stretches. A correctly positioned property finds a buyer; a poorly positioned one accumulates days inside an inventory 14% fuller than a year ago. The variable that decides a 2026 sale is not the asking price, it is what that price costs you in time.

In both cases the right habit is the same: reason from comparable sales in your sector and your property type, not from a provincial median revised twice a year.