É«É«À²

The reaction? “Excellent.”

This was just one post of many from the nearly 5,000 members of a group on Reddit, an assortment of niche online communities with their own discussion forums and subcultures, called .

In a cooling GTA real estate market, tracking losses has become a spectator sport, with social media groups like this one speculating about, and sometimes even cheering, when a home goes for less than what it was bought for.

While slinging mud online isn’t new, these types of downfalls, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, are. The percentage of homes sold for less than what they were bought for in É«É«À²Ìýsurged from 0.7 per cent in 2022 to seven per cent this July, according to data from real-estate technology company HouseSigma.Ìý

But why is this so fascinating, and what does it say about us, and the market?

Part of it, said WilcoÌývan Dijk, a professor of psychology at Leiden University,ÌýisÌýschadenfreude, a German word for taking joy in the misfortune of others.Ìý

“When other people are doing worse, we, by comparison, do a bit better,” he said in a video interview from the Netherlands, where he’s a global expert in the subject.Ìý

The Reddit group,Ìýwhich references bought and sold prices on HouseSigma, is not the only such place for these discussions. Losses are also celebrated on the popular É«É«À² real estate subreddit, and in a private Facebook group called É«É«À² Housing Market Bubble, with 12,000Ìýmembers.Ìý

And on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) blue check mark users (who have paid to have their posts promoted, among other privileges) also call out losses to hundreds and sometimes thousands of likes and reposts.

Van DijkÌýnoted that the homes posted about are often quite expensive, so there may be a sense of an “undeserved advantage” and even justice when the price falls.

“That might be also fused with feelings of envy that you don’t have a $1 million home,” he said.Ìý

“People got rich by just doing nothing” as the value of homes rose, “and now they are getting a bit less rich. And perhaps that’s how it should be in the world,” he said.

This is of course, subjective, he added, the sense of justice is in the eye of the beholder.

Van Dijk, who is a renter himself in Amsterdam, said tenants may worry that they’ve missed out. When they see people losing money on their homes, they feel better about their own situations.

MichaelÌýCarney, director of business development at agreed there does seem to be an element of taking pleasure in others’ misfortune at work in these groups.Ìý

“Certainly, there’s a sentiment out there among the public that people have been speculating in real estate, driving up prices in previous years,” he said. “There can be a little bit of a pleasure in watching people lose on their investments.”

There’s no equivalent word in English for schadenfreudeÌý— although there is in Dutch and several other languages,ÌýVan Dijk said.

He has published a on the subject.

One of his recent research projects, “fruit fight,” fed fake news reports on problems with the iPhone to BlackBerry users, and found that identifying with a certain group increasedÌýschadenfreude reactions to the other group’s misfortune, provided it was in an area of interest.

In this case, the two opposing groups might be renters vs. owners.

Both seem to be fascinated with the losses.Ìý

Potential buyers, said Carney, are waiting to get into the market and see falling prices as their opportunity.

Owners, on the other hand, “want to know the value of their property,” and if they have equity in their own homes. Some might find themselves stuck if the price has dropped, making it hard to move cities or buy a bigger place, Carney added.

Claire Tsai, a professor of marketing and the Corus Entertainment chair in communications strategy at the Rotman School of Management, said the forums could be a place for informal venting. They are used as a coping mechanism for those who have had recent losses, “to try to put things in perspective or even add some humour to it.”

Comparing themselves to others who have lost more, for example, might help owners feel better.

Some of the online commentary, saidÌýCarney, is not only about the losses, but the price strategies of sellers, as apps like HouseSigma make price changes public.

In recent Ìýa waterfront one-bedroom-plus-denÌýcondo sold for almost $30,000 less than in 2017.Ìý

That’s after the owner tried to sell it for about $720,000Ìýin 2024.Ìý

“Poor guy bought 1 year too late. Timing is everything. I bought in 2016 and sold last year for a 350k profit for a downtown condo,” commented one Redditor.

Carney cautioned these losses don’t always tell the whole story. A buyer may lose money on a condo, for example, but get a “forever home” for less as well, so they come out ahead in the end.

Paul Kershaw, aÌýpolicy professor at the University of British Columbia, believes the trend reflects something deeper, even hopeful.

For years, Canadians have had a “cultural addiction” to rising home prices that have skyrocketed past incomes and left many people, particularly millennials and Gen Zs, behind.Ìý

“The fact that you’re seeing groups of people coming together and celebrating the opposite is actually at the cutting edge of fixing this addiction,” he said.Ìý

Kershaw, who is also the founder of Gen Squeeze, a non-profit that advocates for generational fairness, does have “huge sympathy and empathy” for young people who’ve taken on huge mortgages and face the possibility of owing more than their home is worth.

But he said the rise of these online groups is a “significant cultural phenomena” representing a “constituency that is loud and proud.”

“These people cheering price drops help create some social acceptability, the idea that we should have a conversation with what we want for home values,” he said.

“And it might be that they stall or fall moderately.”

Correction - Sept. 2, 2025

This article was updated from a previous version that mistakenly said the Etobicoke red brick home was sold over half-a-million less than when it was last sold, nearÌýthe height of the real estate market in 2002. In fact, it was last sold in spring 2022.Ìý