Brian Matthey

Increasing the use of Canadian wood products may facilitate up to a 17% decrease in ground-oriented housing costs and about 3.5% more housing starts annually.

Key Highlights

• Since 2025, residential construction costs have increasingly been driven by tariff-affected products such as steel, aluminum and manufactured building components. Before that, wood, plastics and composites products largely drove cost price inflation.
• U.S. tariffs on Canadian lumber and transformed wood products may leave more wood available in Canada, creating an opportunity to better use our domestic resources to lower the cost of building homes.
• Ground-oriented housing (detached houses and townhouses) stands to benefit the most. These homes use far more wood products than high-rise apartments and have become increasingly difficult to build in many markets.
• Realizing this opportunity will require better east-west transportation links and continued efforts to reduce internal trade barriers.

What if the latest U.S. tariffs ended up lowering housing construction costs in Canada? While this may sound counterintuitive, new CMHC analysis suggests that tariffs on Canadian lumber and transformed wood products could create an opportunity to build some homes more affordably.

If more Canadian wood products stayed in Canada and were used more consistently across the country, construction costs for ground-oriented housing could fall by as much as 17% in some centres. This would include costs for detached houses and townhouses. Such a change in building habits may lead to an increase of 3.5% in annual ground-oriented housing starts across the country, or close to 4,000 more starts annually. In centres like Calgary, the increase would be close to 8%, while in Toronto and Ottawa it would be about 4.5%.

The number of home sales recorded over Canadian MLS® Systems fell by 2.3% month-over-month in September 2026.

“After a four-month run of modestly positive progress on demand, supply, and prices, many of Canada’s housing markets took a step back in September. This was hardly surprising given the latest jump in fixed mortgage rates, and with the Bank of Canada now widely expected to follow with a rate hike before the end of the year,” said Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s Senior Economist. “With housing affordability already stretched, the big question going forward is how much farther will the Bank have to go to keep a lid on inflation next year? Until that becomes clearer, this fresh round of uncertainty will likely send some buyers back to the sidelines.”

September Highlights:

• National home sales declined by 2.3% month-over-month.
• Actual (not seasonally adjusted) monthly activity came in 7.7% below September 2025.
• The number of newly listed properties fell by 1.8% on a month-over-month basis.
• The MLS® Home Price Index (HPI) edged down by 0.4% on a month-over-month basis and was down 3.4% year-over-year.
• The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average sale price was down 1.6% on a year-over-year basis in September 2026.

The 2024 Canadian Housing Survey offers a detailed look at Canadians’ housing experiences and how they shape everyday life. This article highlights selected findings from the newly released 2024 results, focusing on future housing aspirations, core housing need and self-reported experiences of housing discrimination.

Key Highlights

• Homeownership is a goal for most renter households, but nearly 3 in 10 (28%) said that buying a home is not important to them. Homeowners are generally satisfied with the number of bedrooms they have, while renters would like to have more bedrooms than they currently have.
• Between 2022 and 2024, core housing need remained largely unchanged, with renters continuing to face much higher rates than homeowners.
• Households in the primary rental market face higher core housing need than those in the secondary market. Unsuitability caused 9.7% of core housing need cases in the primary rental market, compared with 3.2% in the secondary market.
• One-person households (20.4%) had the highest rate of core housing need among household types. Indigenous households reached 20.1% in 2024, underscoring ongoing housing challenges among key population groups.1
• Racialized people were 3 times more likely than non-racialized people to report housing discrimination. More than one-third of Black homeowners reported experiencing housing discrimination in their lifetime.