Thunder Bay Housing Market: Home Prices and Sales | September 2026

The Thunder Bay Real Estate Board’s monthly release focuses on single detached homes in the City of Thunder Bay, northwestern Ontario’s largest city, and adds MLS® HPI benchmarks for its wider area. It reports a median rather than an average price for detached homes. This page shows September 2026, released in October 2026. The Canadian housing market overview explains how a median differs from an average or a benchmark, and the Ontario housing market page sets Thunder Bay beside the province’s other reports.

Thunder Bay home prices, September 2026

The median single detached sale was $395,000 (-1.3% from a year earlier), and the year-to-date median $413,750 (2.2%). Dividing the board’s dollar value of detached sales, $47.0 million, by the 109 sales gives an average detached price of about $431,193.

Thunder Bay Real Estate Board, September 2026.

The composite and single-family benchmarks fell on the year, as did the detached median, while the apartment benchmark rose. The median covers only detached homes sold in the city that month, so a few more or fewer sales at either end move it; the benchmark tracks a fixed typical home across the board’s area. The detached median also sits 2% above the single-family benchmark. Prices here are well below southern Ontario’s: Hamilton-Burlington’s composite benchmark, for comparison, is $718,600.

Sales

There were 109 single detached sales (11.2%), selling in a median 18 days, against 14 a year before. That was 18.2% above the five-year average for the month and 12.6% above the 10-year average, and year-to-date detached sales came to 740 (-8.6%). The board’s president, Karen Hill, said inventory across the board’s region had tightened, with both new listings and overall inventory down from August, and that conditions had moved somewhat further in buyers’ favour, though it was too early to call that a lasting shift. Detached homes sold faster than homes in Hamilton, which took a median 46 days.

Buying costs at the detached median

Because the median is under the first down-payment band limit of $500,000, the minimum down payment is a flat 5%: $19,750. Default insurance on that mortgage costs about $15,010 (4.00% of the loan).

With no municipal land transfer tax in Thunder Bay, Ontario’s is the only one: $4,400 at the detached median. Ontario’s first-time buyer refund of up to $4,000 covers the whole tax on a home up to $368,000, so at this price a first-time buyer pays just $400. Other prices can be run on the Ontario calculator.

Property tax weighs more heavily here relative to prices. On the BMA Municipal Study’s standard detached bungalow (the City of Barrie posts the 2025 table), a Thunder Bay owner paid $4,615, about 1.2% of the detached median price, and higher than Windsor’s $3,968 even though Windsor-Essex prices are higher.

Income needed against Thunder Bay incomes

At the detached median, qualifying takes around $91,900 of income with minimum down, or $79,800 with 20% (calculation). Median household income across the Thunder Bay census metropolitan area was $80,000 in the 2021 Census (income year 2020). The minimum-down income is 15% above that median, a much smaller gap than in Hamilton, where the benchmark needs 1.8 times the local median, and buying an apartment at the board’s benchmark takes roughly $80,700.

Related pages

• Ontario housing market
• Winnipeg housing market
• Ontario mortgage affordability calculator