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The Muskoka Cottage Market, By the Numbers | Q2 2026 Report
Q2 2026 Market Report
The Muskoka Cottage Market, By the Numbers
Q2 is in. 129 cottage sales across all Muskoka boards, about a third below where a normal spring quarter sits. Here is what the numbers actually show.
Q2 2026 vs Q2 2025 / At a glance
Cottage sales
Months of inventory
Under $3M sales †
Avg. sale to list price
Terminated listings
Over $3M sales †
Q2 figures cover detached waterfront cottages, all Muskoka boards. 8‑yr averages use 2018–2025. † Under $3M and Over $3M figures are from our team’s Q2 transaction records and may differ slightly from total MLS® board data.
Every number in this report covers detached waterfront cottages and lakefront homes sold across all participating boards in the Muskoka region. Waterfront condominiums and attached waterfront properties are excluded. That distinction matters: it means these figures reflect the segment buyers and sellers actually mean when they talk about the Muskoka cottage market.
129 detached waterfront cottages sold across all multiple boards in Q2 2026. The 8-year average for a spring quarter is 187. That 31 percent gap is the number that matters most right now, and the one that gets buried when you lead with year-over-year comparisons.
Sales were up slightly from Q2 2025, 126 transactions. That tells you the floor is in. It doesn't tell you the market is recovering. Those are different things.
Inventory is running at more than double the historical norm. Terminated listings are at seven times normal. Buyers aren't competing with each other. Sellers are. Here is the detail behind those numbers.
The Quarter
Q2 sales were up slightly. They are still well below average.
Q2 2026 closed at 129 cottage sales across all Muskoka in all price ranges. April and May came in at 70, June added 59. Year to date through July 5, 152 detached waterfront cottages have sold.
Year-over-year the quarter was up 2.4 percent. Against the 8-year Q2 average of 187, it was down 31 percent. Both are accurate. The Q1-to-Q2 seasonal jump was 461 percent. That is the largest we have tracked, and it reflects how slow Q1 was at 23 sales, not how strong Q2 is. The five-year Q2 comparison puts the current number in perspective.
Q2 cottage sales, 2022 to 2026
Full second quarter (April, May and June) · all Muskoka boards, detached waterfront
All three months confirmed. Source: MLS® board data, detached Muskoka waterfront cottages, all boards.
Q2 peaked at 169 sales in 2023, eased to 152 in 2024, then dropped to 126 in 2025. This year's 129 is marginally up from that. The floor appears to be in. We're not calling it a recovery.
Eight Years Out
Eight years of context: where 2026 actually sits
A single quarter doesn't tell you much without a longer frame. Here are annual cottage sales since 2018, the earliest year with complete multi-board coverage.
Annual cottage sales, 2018 to 2025
Compared against the 8‑year average · 2026 is excluded (partial year, 6 months only)
Navy bars without outline are 2018 and 2019, the pre-pandemic baseline. Source: MLS® board data, detached Muskoka waterfront cottages, all boards, 2018 through 2025.
2020 and 2021 were not normal years. Pandemic demand pulled years of activity into a short window and the correction that followed was real. Since 2022, sales have settled into a consistent band of 416 to 471 annually, averaging 440. Our trailing twelve months at 433 sits right in that range.
Against the 8-year average of 579 the market is down about 25 percent. Against the post-correction range it's essentially flat. Four straight years averaging 440 annually. The market has stabilised. It has stabilised at levels well below historical norms. Both of those things are true at the same time, and both matter depending on your position in this market.
The Supply Story
What's driving the imbalance
Sales being up from last year is only part of the picture. Inventory keeps building and terminated listings keep climbing. The chart below tracks the 12-month rolling average of terminations. It does not resolve cleanly when a new quarter starts.
Terminated cottage listings: 12‑month rolling average
January 2018 through June 2026 · all Muskoka boards, detached waterfront
Scroll to explore →
Source: MLS® board data, detached Muskoka waterfront cottages, all boards, January 2018 through June 2026.
322 cottage listings were terminated in Muskoka in 2025. Nearly four times the 2024 total of 81, and well above anything we tracked before 2024. In Q1 2026, 17 listings were terminated. Q2 brought 88. That is a 418 percent jump in a single quarter, driven by sellers who listed for the spring market and could not find buyers at their asking price. June alone logged 48 terminations against 59 sales. These are not sellers who found buyers through other means. They are listings that came off the market without selling. Many will relist. Some already have. Through the first half of 2026 we're at 105 terminated listings, tracking toward or above last year's total.
Two numbers give you a cleaner read on the current balance of the market.
Buyers are active. The Q2 numbers confirm it. The issue isn't demand. It's that supply has grown faster than the market can absorb and a significant share of sellers still aren't priced where buyers are.
On Price
Average price and median price: why the gap matters
The Q2 average sale price was approximately $1.83 million. The Q2 median was $1.21 million. That $600,000 gap is what happens when a handful of high-end transactions pull the average well above where most of the market is actually trading. One sale at $5 million moves the average further than ten sales at $1 million.
The median is the midpoint where half the sales happened above and half below. It was up from $1.13 million in Q2 2025. The average moved in the opposite direction, from $2.07 million to $1.83 million over the same period. Use the one that fits what you're actually buying or selling.
Monthly values shown as faint connecting lines behind each rolling average. The gap between average and median reflects the consistent influence of higher-end sales on the reported average. Source: MLS® board data, detached Muskoka waterfront cottages, all boards.
Sale to list ratio in Q2 was 95 percent, flat from Q2 2025 and about 2 points below the historical average. There's negotiating room, but this isn't a market of deep discounts. Cottages priced to where buyers actually are sell. The termination chart tells you what happens to the ones that aren't.
Two Markets in One
The under-$3M and over-$3M segments are moving differently
For those who have followed our market commentary closely, this divergence comes as no surprise. We began identifying the structural conditions for a two-tier cottage market as early as 2020, when the pandemic created two distinct buyer cohorts in Muskoka: those entering below $3 million, often first-time cottage buyers or remote workers drawn by new flexibility in where they could live and work, and those transacting above it, for whom a future price correction would carry little weight in the buying decision. We wrote at the time that these two groups would behave differently through any market cycle that followed. The data has confirmed that thesis every quarter since.
129 sales against 126 last year doesn't show you where the movement is actually happening. The breakdown by price point does.
In Q2 2025, we recorded 151 waterfront cottage transactions in Muskoka. Of those, 132 were priced under $3 million (87 percent of sales) and 19 were priced above $3 million (13 percent). In Q2 2026, the total was 145 transactions: 122 under $3 million and 23 over $3 million.
That means the sub-$3M market contracted by about 7.6 percent, year over year. The over-$3M market grew by 21 percent. And luxury's share of all Q2 waterfront cottage sales shifted from 12.6 percent to 15.9 percent, a gain of more than three percentage points in a single year.
Cottage sales by price band, Q2 2025 vs Q2 2026
Sub-$3M and over-$3M transactions compared · source: team transaction records
Source: our team’s transaction records, Muskoka waterfront cottages, Q2 of each year. Totals may differ slightly from MLS® board figures due to property classification timing differences between data sources.
The softness in this market is concentrated below $3 million. That's where inventory is highest, where pricing expectations are furthest from where buyers are, and where most of the terminations are occurring.
Above $3 million, Q2 activity was up 21 percent. It's not a uniform market across price points. If you're working at that level, the dynamics are different.
What This Means
What this means right now
If you are buying
The conditions are about as good as they get on the buy side right now. Inventory, time, negotiating room. Not every seller has accepted where the market is yet. You will still see overpriced listings sitting and terminating. Walk away from those.
If you are selling
Buyers are out there. The Q2 numbers confirm that. They're not chasing anything. Price it right from day one. The termination data in this report isn't abstract: those are properties that listed too high, sat, and either re-listed lower or didn't sell. That pattern has been consistent since 2023.
Questions on any of this? Give us a call.
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