Samantha Fisher

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.

• Canada has not been immune to the recent rise in global bond yields, which reflects a more challenging backdrop for fiscal and monetary policy. These higher yields (which underpin fixed mortgage rates) are likely already impacting Canada’s housing market, with sales declining for the first time in six months in August.
• With the forces behind the climb in rates set to linger, we’ve upgraded our forecast for bond yields through next year, relative to our prior forecast in June. This upgrade comes even under our baseline assumption that the Bank of Canada remains on hold through 2027 amid near-target underlying inflation and an expected gradual easing in crude oil prices.
• Accordingly, our near-term forecasts for growth in Canadian home sales and average home prices have been downgraded. Canadian home sales are tracking a decline of about 5% this year and are unlikely to recover this lost ground in 2027. Although we still see roughly flat Canadian average home price growth this year, next year prices will likely expand at a sub-2% pace.
• While housing is likely to remain subdued in 2027, our projections envision positive (albeit modest) quarterly growth in both Canadian home sales and average prices. Even so, home sales are likely to remain well below pre-pandemic levels through next year. Anticipated quarterly gains are likely to be supported by the further release of pent-up demand. Job markets are also forecast to improve gradually, although the outlook has been downgraded relative to our prior projection due to the recent escalation in the Canada-U.S. trade conflict. Perhaps most crucially, this forecast depends on some downdrift in Canadian bond yields beginning in the fourth quarter and lasting through next year.

Highlights

• Canada’s supply gap is broadly unchanged from last year. Relative to our 2025 estimate, the supply gaps narrowed in Toronto and Calgary and remained unchanged in Vancouver. However, the supply gaps have widened in Ottawa and Montréal.
• Construction is expected to slow faster than demand, leaving Canada short of the roughly 417,000 to 469,000 homes needed each year to restore pre-pandemic affordability by 2036.
• Not building enough during the current housing downturn is a key risk. Near-term affordability improvements since 2023 may be difficult to sustain if housing construction does not keep pace with future demand. Although rental market conditions have eased, ownership supply is facing significant challenges.

Canada's housing market is entering a new phase. We see slower population growth, more balanced rental markets, improving affordability and elevated housing completions in many cities. However, the key risk is that Canada does not build enough during today’s market softening and falls short of housing when demand strengthens again. That would leave Canada significantly behind the 417,000 to 469,000 homes needed each year to restore pre-pandemic affordability by 2036.

• Consistent with our national forecast, we’ve embedded upgrades to 2026 real GDP growth across most provinces. That said, the drivers of these boosts vary, with a solid Q2 boosting Ontario, oil production lifting regions like Alberta, and investment supporting B.C. 
• Regional growth divergences are set to widen into 2027 as tariffs, export bans, and higher energy prices create a clear divide between commodity-producing and manufacturing-oriented provinces. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland & Labrador are benefiting from stronger oil prices through higher incomes, profits, and government revenues. In addition, they’re relatively insulated from trade disruptions thanks to commodity exemptions and more diversified export markets. In contrast, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick face a double headwind from disproportionate tariff exposure and higher energy costs, with few offsetting benefits from the commodity price upswing.
• Federal and provincial governments have rolled out new waves of support in response to escalated trade frictions, including loan programs, wage subsidies, grants and EI enhancements. These measures should provide some offset to new external shocks.
• Recent better-than-expected employment gains have pushed unemployment rates lower across most provinces, though softer hiring next year is expected to slow further improvement. At the same time, sharply weaker population growth – including outright declines in Ontario, Quebec, B.C., Manitoba, and Newfoundland & Labrador – will restrain both labour force gains and upward pressure on jobless rates.
• Renewed conflict in the Middle East has pushed WTI oil back to the $100/bbl mark and reinforced a source of uncertainty for the economic outlook. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland & Labrador are benefiting through sizable revenue windfalls, energy-sector incomes and profits. Elsewhere, higher prices are a net drag.
• The combination of rising yields and downgraded economic activity underpins broad-based downgrades to growth in home sales and average home prices. On the latter, B.C. and Ontario are an exception, where compositional forces (i.e. stronger sales growth in more expensive properties) are supporting average prices. This trend is likely to persist in the near term. 

High interest rates are affecting mortgage choices at renewal in Canada. More households are choosing variable-rate and shorter-term mortgages, increasing their exposure to future interest-rate changes.

Key Takeaways

• Recent interest-rate volatility has highlighted how quickly mortgage costs can change for many Canadian households when mortgages come up for renewal.
• Canadians are increasingly choosing variable-rate mortgages and shorter fixed-rate terms, changing their exposure to future interest-rate movements.
• Mortgage term choices do more than affect borrowing costs. They influence how interest-rate risk is distributed across households and the broader financial system.
• As economic uncertainty increases, decisions about mortgage terms may become more important for households' financial resilience.

The average asking rent for a two-bedroom apartment across all census metropolitan areas (CMAs) combined was $2,130 per month in the second quarter of 2026, down 3.6% from the second quarter of 2025.

These findings are from the Quarterly Rent Statistics program for the second quarter of 2026. These new data are compiled for CMAs across Canada's 10 provinces.

In the second quarter, asking rent for a two-bedroom apartment decreased year over year in many CMAs, such as Abbotsford–Mission (-6.4%), Calgary (-6.4%), Montréal (-5.2%) and Vancouver (-4.1%); however, it increased year over year in other CMAs, such as Thunder Bay (+6.5%), Sherbrooke (+5.7%), Halifax (+5.3%) and Saskatoon (+5.2%). Average monthly asking rent was highest in Vancouver ($3,030), Toronto ($2,650), Victoria ($2,640) and Halifax ($2,400).

Where available, the concept of paid rent has been added to the estimates from the first quarter of 2019 onward. While asking rent refers to the price posted on major rental listing platforms, paid rent reflects the current amount paid by existing renters, typically based on a formal lease agreement and, if applicable, subsequent rent increases. Paid rent estimates for the second quarter of 2026 are available for 18 CMAs.

In the second quarter, the average asking rent for a two-bedroom apartment was higher than the average paid rent in almost all CMAs where both figures were available. The only exceptions were Calgary (asking rent of $1,890 per month and paid rent of $1,930 per month), Regina (asking rent of $1,480 and paid rent of $1,580) and Edmonton ($1,570 each). Average monthly paid rent for a two-bedroom apartment was highest in Vancouver ($2,470) and Toronto ($2,160) in the second quarter.

The number of home sales recorded over Canadian MLS® Systems decreased by 0.7% on a month-over-month basis in August 2026. Monthly activity has now remained largely unchanged since May.

“Sales activity and price trends were largely unchanged for a fourth consecutive month in August,” said Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s Senior Economist. “What has changed is the broader economic environment, with the Bank of Canada recently warning of rising inflation risks, along with doubts about the durability of recent economic growth. For borrowers, fixed mortgage rates have already increased on higher bond yields. Meanwhile, on the variable rate side, a rate hike is not only back on the table for this year but already priced in by markets. This fresh round of incoming headwinds is expected to dampen the prospects for further housing market momentum heading into 2027.”

August Highlights:

• National home sales fell by 0.7% month-over-month.
• Actual (not seasonally adjusted) monthly activity came in 6.9% below August 2025.
• The number of newly listed properties climbed 3.3% on a month-over-month basis.
• The MLS® Home Price Index (HPI) was unchanged on a month-over-month basis and was down 3% year-over-year.
• The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average sale price was up 0.6% on a year-over-year basis in August 2026.

New listings rebounded by 3.3% on a month-over-month basis in August 2026, reversing three straight declines earlier in the summer.