The country’s major metropolitan luxury real estate markets broke consecutive records throughout 2021 as Canadians’ urgent, pandemic-influenced demand for housing mobility and strengthening confidence in the country’s economic recovery drove price gains, eroded inventory and propelled markets to historic highs.

Canada’s metropolitan luxury real estate markets are undergoing an unprecedented phase of evolution and expansion, according to Sotheby’s International Realty Canada. One year following the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic, the compounding effects of dramatic changes in the housing preferences of affluent Canadians, new demands across multiple generations of homeowners and buyers, significant cash accumulation, easy access to borrowing, and pent-up local and international demand, are rippling across the market. With sales activity and price gains accelerating across major cities across the country as a result, strong performance is projected this spring.

From a light-filled Parisian apartment to a historic Biltmore Forest home in North Carolina, these are this month’s four featured notable propertiesfor sale over $2 million.

In the Greater Toronto Area (Durham, Halton, Peel, Toronto and York), market confidence and top-tier sales activity renewed in the first half of 2018 as consumer psychology recovered from the April 2017 introduction of the Ontario Fair Housing Plan, particularly within the City of Toronto. Given unprecedented gains in the region’s $1 million-plus sales volume from 2015 to 2017, with surges of 56% in 2015 over 2014, 65% in 2016 over 2015, and 41% in the first half of 2017 over the first half of 2016, year-over-year comparisons of 2018 to 2017 sales activity mask the region’s market resilience. On the surface, $1 million-plus residential real estate sales fell 46% year-over-year in the first half of 2018, while sales over $4 million fell 51%. However, 2018 sales volume trended in line with 2015’s pre-surge levels: GTA $1 million-plus real estate sales in the first half of 2018 increased 25% from the number of units sold in the first half of 2015, while sales over $4 million were up 72%.

Montreal is projected to lead Canadian luxury real estate in market performance in spring 2018, as strong economic fundamentals and soaring consumer confidence drive demand and elevate prices in the market for homes over $1 million. New data compiled by Sotheby’s International Realty Canada for the preliminary months of 2018 also suggest continued recovery in top-tier real estate in Calgary, where January and February sales over $1 million rose 45% year-over-year.