Niagara Real Estate Market Report: August 2026

This is my first monthly market report, and the plan is simple. Each month I take the official numbers for our board, put them in one place, and tell you what I think they mean if you’re buying or selling here.

Every figure below comes from the board statistics page that the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) publishes in co-operation with the Niagara Association of REALTORS® (CREA, Niagara Association of REALTORS® board statistics). Each figure was checked against that page on 2 October 2026. August is the most recent month published at the time of writing, so that’s the month this report covers.

Every month’s report is listed on my Niagara market report page, so you can compare one month with another.

Sales were a little lower than last August, and new listings were a lot lower. Here are the main numbers next to their change from August 2025, as CREA reports them.

A few comparisons the board publishes alongside those make them easier to place. August sales were 3 per cent below the five-year average and 19.5 per cent below the 10-year average for the month. New listings were 13 per cent below the five-year average for August, and CREA notes it was the lowest number of new listings in any August in five years.

Active listings tell a different story from new listings. Even after falling 17.1 per cent from a year earlier, they were 0.2 per cent above the five-year average and 28 per cent above the 10-year average for August.

Over the first eight months of 2026, 4,117 homes sold, which is 2.9 per cent fewer than the same stretch of 2025. The year-to-date average price was $645,329, down 4.8 per cent.

One more way to look at it. For every 100 new listings that came on in August, about 44 homes sold (522 sales against 1,189 new listings). That ratio is my own arithmetic from the two published figures, and it isn’t a number CREA publishes.

The MLS® Home Price Index (HPI) benchmark is the price of a typical home in the area, and it tracks price trends more reliably than the average sale price. The average moves around depending on which homes happened to sell that month. The benchmark is built to smooth that out.

Every property type was lower than a year earlier. Apartments showed the largest drop of the four, at 11.3 per cent.

Months of inventory was 6 at the end of August. That’s how long it would take to sell every active listing at the current pace of sales. CREA puts the long-run average for this time of year at 4.1 months, so you had more homes to choose from than is typical for August.

Benchmark prices were also lower than a year earlier for every property type. If you last looked at Niagara prices in 2025, it’s worth looking again with this year’s numbers in front of you.

Here’s what these numbers can’t tell you. They describe the whole board area for one month. They don’t tell you what a particular house on a particular street is worth, and they don’t tell you where prices go from here. I won’t pretend otherwise.

If you’re starting out, my buying page walks through the process, and the hidden costs of buying a home in Ontario covers what to budget for on top of the price.

Fewer new listings came on in August than in any August in five years. Active listings were down 17.1 per cent from a year earlier. So there was less new competition coming on than last year.

At the same time, inventory was still above the long-run average for August, and benchmark prices were lower than a year earlier across every property type. If you’re pricing your home off what a neighbour got in 2025, that comparison may not hold. A pricing conversation built on recent sales near you is the place to start.

Time on market depends a lot on the type of home. CREA publishes days on market quarterly rather than monthly. In the second quarter of 2026, the median was 26 days for single detached homes, 35 days for townhouse and row units, and 42 days for apartments (CREA, Niagara market conditions).

If you want a number for your own home rather than the board average, you can request a home value estimate, and I’ve explained how I arrive at one in how much is my home worth in Niagara.

These are board-level figures, not town-level figures. The Niagara Association of REALTORS® lists the communities it serves as Fort Erie, Fonthill/Pelham, Lincoln, Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Port Colborne/Wainfleet, St. Catharines, Thorold and Welland. One benchmark covers all of them, so the figure for your own town could sit above or below it. Grimsby isn’t on that list, so these figures don’t speak for it directly.

I compare each month with the same month a year earlier, because that’s how the board reports its changes and because real estate is seasonal. August is a different month to sell in than April.

The benchmark price and the average price measure different things. The benchmark is a typical home. The average is whatever mix of homes sold that month. When they move by different amounts, that’s usually why.

A board-wide number is a starting point. What matters for your move is what’s selling on your street and in your price range right now. If you’d like to go through that together, get in touch.

Source for every market figure in this report: The Canadian Real Estate Association, in co-operation with the Niagara Association of REALTORS®, published on CREA’s board statistics page and its market conditions page, checked 2 October 2026.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It describes published market statistics for a past month and isn’t a prediction or a guarantee of any price or outcome. CREA and the Niagara Association of REALTORS® state that the accuracy and completeness of the information isn’t guaranteed.