Boards lost the plot. Realtors are paying for it.

In May 2025, just 42 new condominium apartments were sold in the City of Toronto. That’s a 69 per cent drop year-over-year, and a staggering 97 per cent below May 2021. Across the entire GTA, only 345 new homes sold: 208 single-family and 137 condos.

According to Altus Group, this ongoing sales collapse threatens to stall Toronto’s housing pipeline and wipe out over 40,000 construction-related jobs if conditions don’t improve.

Released in late June by Altus Group and BILD, the May figures represent the most current full-month snapshot of new home sales (and one of the most seasonally significant periods in the housing calendar).

That’s the story. But if you looked to organized real estate for answers, you’d never know it.

Instead of urgency, members got optics. Boards that were built to support Realtors through difficult markets have become fixated on protecting their own narrative.

In the middle of the worst new home sales slump in decades, some boards offered commentary on crime and bail reform (yes, in a housing update) while others painted a sunshine-and-rainbows picture of a market building momentum when, in fact, it barely regained its footing amidst trade tensions and election uncertainty.

While Realtors were trying to explain to clients why nothing was moving, their representative bodies were preserving image instead of delivering insight.

The quieter the market gets, the louder some boards become. Because when your value proposition fades, overreach starts to look like relevance.

What boards could have said (but didn’t)

A board serious about member service would have used this moment to speak directly to the economic fundamentals reshaping the market:

Canadians need to deleverage. Household debt is still hovering at 173.9 per cent of disposable income. According to the Bank of Canada’s May 2025 Financial Stability Report, 60 per cent of mortgages in Canada will renew in 2025 or 2026. Even after seven rate cuts, most borrowers will face payment increases. OSFI continues to warn that structural debt exposure remains high. 

Boards could have helped members prepare their clients and themselves for that reality. They didn’t.

Cap rates are flashing yellow. Altus Group’s Q1 2025 Investment Trends Survey shows capitalization rates trending upward across several asset classes. Suburban multi-unit residential rose to 4.65 per cent. Single-tenant industrial reached 5.93 per cent. On paper, these shifts may seem small. But they translate into five to 15 per cent headline valuation losses; enough to reset investment expectations and weaken the price floor in residential markets.

It should have been the front-page story of every board update. Instead, we got distraction.

And the consequences? Builders can’t make projects pencil. Equity partners are waiting. Lenders are cautious. Land deals are stalling. The risk-free rate is no longer a rounding error. Realtors are in the middle of this. Boards could have helped them understand it. They didn’t.

But the warning signs weren’t limited to cap rates and debt loads. Purpose-built rental completions may be near record highs, but new starts have cratered, down 60 per cent year-over-year, and the pipeline is thinning fast. Vacancy is rising, incentives are back, and investor confidence is softening. Still, boards said nothing.

They also stayed quiet on Ontario’s growing outmigration, on OSFI’s proposed replacement for the mortgage stress test, and on CMHC’s quiet retreat from its affordability benchmark. These aren’t footnotes. They’re flashing signals. The story is playing out across every part of the housing system and boards could have helped members make sense of it.

They didn’t. 

Whether it was neglect, confusion, or incapacity, the result is the same: silence when members needed clarity.

The agency problem, made personal

And the silence isn’t accidental. It’s structural.

Boards didn’t just miss these signals. They were never required to address them. Because when power becomes insulated, accountability fades. The problem isn’t just what wasn’t said. It’s why no one had to say it. And that brings us to how real estate governance actually works, and who it works for.

The agency problem happens when people who are supposed to act in your best interest start acting in their own. It creeps in slowly. In governance, it happens when directors and executives stop speaking for members and start managing around them.

This isn’t another article about disengagement. It’s about representation.

Directors begin to equate dissent with disloyalty. Executives start to believe that continuity equals leadership. And over time, boards stop responding to members and start protecting themselves.

That’s how we end up with multi-year tech contracts. Education programs launched without regulator or even stakeholder input. Conduct policies applied retroactively. And when challenged, the response is always procedural: “We followed the process.”

Disenfranchisement by design

Of course they followed the process, because the process was built to protect them from you.

Quorum thresholds are alarmingly low. At some boards, just a handful of votes in an organization of thousands, or even tens of thousands, are enough to pass sweeping by-law changes. As REM has previously published, TRREB’s most recent AGM saw a record turnout. Just over 1,000 members voted, including proxies, out of a membership of more than 70,000. One of the most controversial votes in years failed by fewer than 250 ballots.

This isn’t oversight. It’s insulation.

Through proxy stacking, a handful of insiders can quietly collect voting rights from disengaged members and consolidate control without resistance. Floor motions are ruled out of order. Consultations happen after decisions are finalized. Procedural legitimacy is performed, not earned.

Members don’t just feel shut out. They are.

What Realtors get instead

While agents are trying to keep deals alive and guide uncertain clients through turbulent financing, their boards are delivering generic talking points and irrelevant press releases.

They need data. Insight. Perspective.

Instead, they get messaging. Crime commentary. Boilerplate optimism. Statements no one asked for, released on their behalf.

You can’t fix this with a vote

This isn’t about better personalities. It’s about power.

Major by-law changes and dues increases should require a referendum. Programs introduced without a vote should sunset unless reaffirmed. Governance audits should be routine, not radical. And a national standard for board transparency and accountability should already exist.

In every other sector, these are baseline expectations.

In real estate, they’re treated as revolutionary.

The bottom line

Boards are not regulators. They are service providers. Their power flows from Realtors, not to them. If they’ve forgotten that, remind them.

As I argued in a previous article, the problem isn’t disengagement. It’s disenfranchisement.

You’re not just a member. You’re the owner. Act like it. Ask harder questions. Demand transparency. Refuse silence as an answer.