Housing Market Assessment — Canada and Metropolitan Areas

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CMHC contributes to market stability by providing information on potential housing market vulnerability.

The Housing Market Assessment provides evidence of housing market imbalances across Canada. This, in turn, helps market participants to make better-informed housing-related decisions.

This report provides economic and housing market conditions for Canada and 14 Census Metropolitan Areas for the second quarter of 2021.

Highlights from the September 2021 release:

The Canadian housing market has moved from a moderate to a high degree of vulnerability. The change was prompted by the detection of price acceleration alongside persistent overvaluation imbalances.
High vulnerability at the national level is largely a reflection of intensified and persistent imbalances in several local housing markets across Ontario and Eastern Canada.
Montréal's housing market has moved to a high degree of vulnerability due to the detection of overvaluation imbalances. In Vancouver, it has moved to a low degree of vulnerability and in Toronto, it remained at a high degree.

For the full and regional results, download the latest report.

Individual Housing Market Assessments for each region have been discontinued and are now available in the Canada report. For regional information after First Quarter 2020, select the Canada report and use the menu at the beginning of the report to navigate to the region of your choice.

Geography: Edition:

Author:: CMHC
Document Type:: PDF
Date Published:: September 28, 2021

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About the Housing Market Assessment

The Housing Market Assessment provides timely, accurate, and reliable assessments of Canadian housing markets.

It is not a forecasting tool or housing affordability assessment.

The HMA is an analytical framework intended to detect evidence of current or emerging imbalances across Canada. The report is aimed at assessing whether there are risks from the overall housing market that could ultimately affect financial stability. It combines the results from a technical framework with insights gained through CMHC analysts’ knowledge of local market conditions. To obtain an accurate picture of the overall state of the housing market, multiple measures and indicators are analyzed. The HMA uses a comprehensive, multidimensional, and integrated framework to assess housing market conditions.

To capture imbalances in housing markets, the HMA framework assesses 4 factors:

overheating, when housing demand outpaces supply
price acceleration, when there is a sustain increase in the growth rate of house prices
overvaluation of house prices in comparison to levels that can be supported by housing market fundamentals
excess inventories (formerly “overbuilding”), when the inventory of available housing units is elevated

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