“The families who navigate this market best will be the ones who make decisions based on what is actually happening, not what they hope will resolve itself.”

Grace Simon  ·  New Doors Group | eXp Luxury

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The Conversation

I’ve Been Sitting With This for a While

I’ve been sitting with this for a while, deciding whether to write it. Not because the data isn’t clear — it is. But because this is a harder conversation than the ones I usually have, and I want to have it honestly.

Last year, nearly half of my client conversations included something I hadn’t heard at this volume before: serious, deliberate plans to leave.

Not “we’re thinking about Alberta someday.” Not “maybe when the kids are older.” Planned. Researched. Serious.

Some had already hired a realtor in Calgary. One family had visited three neighbourhoods in Scottsdale. A retired couple — twenty-two years in Newmarket, two grandchildren fifteen minutes away — were running the numbers on Portugal.

These weren’t people in crisis. They were organized, equity-rich, successful people who had simply decided that the life they wanted was no longer something they could build here. That wasn’t affordability alone. That was a feeling about the direction of this country. And I couldn’t talk them out of it, because I understood it.

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Population Data

The Numbers Are Not Soft

In 2025, 120,640 people emigrated from Canada — the highest annual total since Statistics Canada records began in 1952.

More Canadians left the country last year than in any year since the 1960s brain drain, when professionals left by the thousands for better wages south of the border. We are at that level again. And in the first quarter of 2026 alone, 30,092 Canadian citizens and permanent residents emigrated — the highest Q1 figure in more than seventy years of tracking.

Ontario is at the centre of this. Despite representing 39% of Canada’s population, Ontario accounts for roughly 47% of all national departures. 56,266 people left Ontario in 2025. That is a record. And it is not a rounding error.

Separate from international emigration, Ontario lost a net 14,044 residents to other provinces in 2025 — primarily to Alberta, which recorded its fifteenth consecutive quarter as the top destination for interprovincial migrants.

Alberta isn’t gaining people by accident. It’s gaining them because the math there is different, and people who can do math are noticing.

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What Is Driving It

Affordability Is the Headline, But It Is Not the Whole Story

Affordability is the headline, and it’s real. But in my experience sitting across from these families, it’s rarely the only thing. The conversations are more layered than that.

There’s the tax environment. There’s a sense that government responsiveness at every level has deteriorated — that decisions are made around people rather than for them. There’s a specific frustration among entrepreneurs and professionals that building something here requires too much friction for too little return.

There’s also the question of what this country’s economic relationship with the United States looks like over the next decade, and what it means for their businesses, their pensions, and their children’s options.

These are not fringe concerns. They are being raised in kitchens in Stonehaven by people who have worked their entire adult lives, built significant wealth, paid significant taxes, and are now asking whether the contract they believed in is still in place.

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York Region Housing

What This Does to the York Region Housing Market

Here is why this matters to you as a homeowner, and why it’s not simply a trend to watch from a distance.

Population is the foundation of housing demand. When the people most likely to buy your home — professionals in their 30s and 40s, dual-income families, equity-accumulating couples — are leaving in record numbers, the pool of capable, motivated buyers contracts.

This does not collapse a market overnight. Newmarket real estate remains one of the most desirable communities in the province, and the fundamentals — schools, transit proximity, green space, and community identity — do not disappear.

But a sustained outflow of this demographic changes the calculus. It affects the timeline you can expect. It affects the negotiating dynamic. It affects who makes an offer and what they are able to pay.

The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board market data continues to be an important resource for homeowners watching this shift, but local context matters just as much as regional numbers.

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Family Real Estate Planning

What This Means for Family Real Estate Planning

If half of the clients I served last year were thinking about leaving, the other half were thinking about their children — specifically, whether their children could stay.

These are two sides of the same problem. The people who want their family to remain rooted in Newmarket are watching their adult children get priced out. The people who are leaving are often doing so precisely because their children already left and the anchor is gone.

This is why family real estate planning in the York Region housing market is no longer a nice-to-have conversation. It is strategic and urgent.

For a deeper look at this exact family conversation, read my guide on how parents in Newmarket are helping their children buy a home.

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The Bigger Picture

This Is Not the End of the Story

I want to be clear about something: Newmarket is not emptying. The community I’ve spent my life in has more inherent value than a single economic cycle can erase.

People who know it, stay. And people who come here, stay. The bones of this place — the sense of identity, the generational depth, the quality of the neighbourhoods — are real.

But the market is not static. And the families who navigate this period best will be the ones who made decisions based on what is actually happening, not what they hope will resolve itself without their attention.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Ontario Emigration and Newmarket Real Estate FAQ

© 2026 Grace Simon  ·  Licensed Real Estate Salesperson  ·  eXp Realty, Brokerage  ·  Newmarket, Ontario
Market data, tax, mortgage, and relocation decisions should be reviewed with qualified professionals before making decisions.
Not intended to solicit parties already under representation.