When HouseSigma, real estate boards, and local media track the housing market, we often focus on prices — what sold last month and for how much, whether values are up or down year over year, and so on. That’s useful and newsworthy in itself, but price data tells only tells us what already happened. By the time a trend shows up in sale prices, the conditions driving those price adjustments have often already changed.
HouseSigma’s Market Temperature graphs measure something different: the absorption rate, which is the share of active listings that sell in a given month. It captures the live balance between supply and demand. You can find these Market Temperature graphs by scrolling down a little on any of our Market Trends pages, such as this Metro Vancouver page, this GTA page, and this Greater Calgary page. (You can also choose any other HouseSigma-covered geographic area, and filter by factors such as municipality, neighbourhood, and home type.)
When we examined five years of transaction data across Metro Vancouver, the Greater Toronto Area and Greater Calgary, a clear pattern emerged. The absorption rate doesn’t just describe current conditions — it often moves ahead of what sellers actually accept at the negotiating table, otherwise known as the sale-to-list-price ratio.
This means that the absorption rate can give us a clue about where prices are heading, because if we can predict that sellers will be forced into giving deeper discounts (or if they have the power to not accept discounts, or even force buyers to offer over list price) then we can predict what the overall typical sale prices will be.
A tale of three major markets
The pandemic buying frenzy of 2021 and early 2022 pushed absorption rates to extraordinary levels in all three urban areas, though the experience differed considerably between them.
In the GTA, demand was so intense during that period that monthly sales far outpaced the number of “active listings” — the count of available homes for sale at the end of the month. This can happen when homes that are being listed throughout the month are being snapped up, in addition to existing inventory, and never make it to the month-end inventory count.
Check out this graph below, with the blue line and left-side Y axis showing the absorption rate across the GTA as a whole over the past five years.
Metro Vancouver saw similarly elevated activity in 2021 and 2022, per the graph below, before also seeing a rapid decline that has led to today’s buyer’s market. Like in the GTA, there was a brief recovering mini-peak in 2023 before the slow period of mostly decline up to today.
If you examine the green line on those two graphs, with a measure on the right-side Y-axis, you can see the sale-to-list-price ratio — the median percentage of the asking price that sellers were getting in the actual sale. It’s clear that in both cities during that 2021-22 period, sellers weren’t just receiving offers at asking price (the 100% dotted red line); homes were typically closing at a price above asking, especially in the GTA for a prolonged period. However, this is clearly not the case today.
Calgary told a subtler version of the same story. The absorption rate climbed sharply, but even at peak heat, most transactions completed at or just above the asking price rather than dramatically over it.
Calgary’s market competitiveness has always expressed itself through speed and volume rather than the kind of overbidding that became common in Toronto and Vancouver. Record international and interprovincial migration drove housing demand in Calgary, with employment gains and relative affordability continuing to attract people to the province even amid high interest rates.
Does the absorption rate actually predict what comes next for prices?
To answer this accurately, we ran a statistical analysis testing whether the absorption rate (or “Market Temperature”) in a given month is more closely correlated with sale-to-list-price ratios in that same month, or in the months that follow. The answer depends on the market.
In the GTA and Greater Calgary, the absorption rate is genuinely predictive of rising or falling sale-to-list-price ratios. The correlation between this month’s absorption rate and next month’s median sale-to-list ratio is stronger than the concurrent relationship — meaning the absorption rate tends to move about a month ahead of negotiating outcomes in those cities.
Greater Vancouver Realtors’ historical analysis confirms the broader relationship between absorption rate and pricing, finding that downward pressure on home prices occurs when the absorption rate dips below 12% for a sustained period, while upward pressure tends to emerge when it surpasses 20%. In HouseSigma’s Metro Vancouver graph above, however, the correlations are nearly identical at every month, as the two metrics move together rather than one leading the other. Vancouver’s market appears to adjust faster — suggesting that sellers tend to change prices more quickly in response to changing absorption conditions, compressing the gap.
Jeremy Bator, a leading HouseSigma agent in the Lower Mainland of BC, observed, ““Metro Vancouver sellers don’t sit around waiting for the market to catch up — they adjust on the fly. With the region’s strong international influence, there’s an added layer of sophistication in how sellers read and react to market signals. It’s kind of like driving around here — hesitate for a second and someone’s already merged into your lane.”
Calgary’s second boom cycle
One of the most interesting findings from the five-year dataset is that Calgary ran a second complete boom cycle that Vancouver and the GTA did not. After cooling in late 2022, Calgary’s absorption rate surged again through 2023 and into early 2024, fuelled by continued interprovincial migration from British Columbia and Ontario. CMHC noted that roughly 70% of net interprovincial migration into Alberta was coming from B.C. and Ontario, as buyers priced out of those markets sought relative affordability in Calgary. The absorption rate and the median sale-to-list-price ratio both peaked again in spring 2024, with sellers once more commanding full asking price — and in each case the absorption rate’s climb preceded the improvement in sale-to-list outcomes by roughly a month, consistent with the statistical analysis.
That pattern then reversed. Calgary’s absorption rate has been falling steadily since mid-2024, and the sale-to-list-price ratio has tracked it downward. Sellers who were receiving full asking price 18 months ago are now accepting modest discounts.
Raj Sandhu, a leading HouseSigma agent in Calgary, said, “Calgary’s market has been one of the most resilient in the country over the past few years. However, as supply has caught up and interest rates remain a factor, we’re now seeing a clear cooling trend. The absorption rate has been a reliable leading signal. Once it started declining, we saw seller’s price expectations adjust shortly after.”
Where things stand now
All three markets are currently cooling, and in each the sale-to-list ratio is following the absorption rate down. Metro Vancouver’s absorption rate hit a five-year low in January 2026 and is still very muted. The GTA has been soft throughout 2025, with sellers consistently accepting below asking. Calgary, starting from a higher base, has cooled more recently but is now tracking the same direction.
The sales-to-active listings ratio in Metro Vancouver remains below the level that typically signals upward price pressure, indicating that downward pressure on pricing may persist if conditions do not tighten. The same observation holds in the GTA and Calgary.
Sammy Kohn, a leading HouseSigma agent in the GTA, warned that it is important to recognize statistics only paint part of the picture. He said, “‘I definitely look at stats, but lean more on client realities — it’s always case by case. That said, Toronto’s demand edging up right now means balanced absorption, which signal steady or rising prices ahead — and if it keeps buyers and sellers even, that’s a win for everyone.”
That said, stats are a useful part of the picture, as long as they’re taken in context. And for anyone trying to decide when to list or when to buy, the Market Temperature graph offers something the sale-price charts don’t: an early read on where negotiating conditions may be heading. In most markets, that signal tends to arrive before the shift shows up in what homes actually sell for, so it’s worth keeping an eye on it.
Follow your local Market Temperature and other data on our Market Trends pages, such as this Metro Vancouver page, this GTA page, and this Greater Calgary page.