Canadian company buys up $30M worth of unsold condos in downtown Toronto -- it says it’s just getting started

A condo building is set against condo construction site in downtown in Toronto on Thursday, May 25, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

A Canadian real estate company is eyeing Toronto’s soft condo market as it looks to buy $500-million worth of unsold units, starting with a $30-million “bulk” purchase steps from Toronto Metropolitan University.

Jesta Group, based in Montreal, announced Tuesday its acquisition of the condos in the downtown core as the first part of a 12-month strategy that will target more than 1,000 properties in the city.

The number of condos included in the purchase and their addresses were not disclosed.

In a news release, the company said that Toronto’s current market environment has created a “unique window to deploy capital at scale.”

“We are aggressively pursuing opportunities that fit this investment ethos and encourage developers with qualifying inventory to reach out directly,” Jesta Group’s senior managing director, Anthony O’Brien, said in a statement.

The firm said it is “actively pursuing” additional bulk acquisitions across “high-quality” downtown Toronto locations. Their plans for the properties were not made clear in the news release.

The announcement comes at a time when condo sales in Toronto are plunging.

An analysis of Toronto’s real estate market by Urbanation last month found that sales declined to a 35-year low in the first quarter of 2026. At the same time, there were zero new condo projects launched in the GTHA for the first time in decades.

According to Urbanation, a record-high 4,295 new condos were completed and unsold as of Q1, which is more than double the unsold inventory that was on the market last year. That number is five times higher than it was in 2024, they said.

Jesta went on to say that its buying strategy marks “one of the largest single-firm” bulk residential acquisition the Toronto market has ever seen.

With files from Jermaine Wilson