Housing Market Outlook

PDF - Report

Our Housing Market Outlook provides forward-looking analysis into Canada’s housing markets. This helps anticipate emerging trends in Canada's new home, resale and rental housing segments and their potential impacts on affordability and other housing challenges at the national and local level.

Key highlights from the 2022 release

We expect the growth in prices, sales levels, and housing starts to moderate from recent highs but remain elevated in 2022. Robust GDP growth, higher employment and net migration will support demand.
In 2023 and 2024, the growth in prices will moderate with sales and starts activity remaining above long-run averages. Home ownership affordability will decline with rising mortgage rates and with the growth in prices expected to outpace income growth. Rental affordability is also set to decline from increasing rental demand and low stocks of rental housing.
The growth in prices will likely continue to be led by markets with already low listings, including Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa.
Supply constraints on construction will continue to impact major centres and especially Vancouver and Toronto, highlighting the central role of housing supply in determining affordability.
The Prairie provinces, led by Alberta, will likely see relatively strong sales and starts levels and be stimulated by energy sector investments and higher energy and commodities prices. The growth in prices is predicted to remain below the national average reflecting more balanced supply conditions than in other regions.
Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia will likely see the strongest price gains in 2022. This will largely reflect tighter supply constraints than in the rest of Canada. The growth in prices in these provinces is expected to slow by the end of 2024.
The Atlantic region will likely see continued upward pressure on housing activity and growth in prices from high inter-provincial migration. The level of home prices will remain relatively low in comparison to the overall Canadian average.

Author:: CMHC
Document Type:: PDF
Date Published:: April 21, 2022

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The Housing Market Outlook is an annual publication that includes forecasts housing market variables such as starts, prices, resales, vacancy rates and rents. The report presents forecasts for key housing demand drivers such as population, employment, migration, earnings, and mortgage rates.

Visit our Housing Knowledge Centre for past editions or to browse our entire collection.

As of October 29 2020, the Northern Housing Report is now separate from the Housing Market Outlook series. It no longer provides forecasts due to the limited data available from the areas in the North.

Note: For the 2019 release of the Housing Market Outlook, the focus of CMHC’s forecasts and analysis will be on larger markets. Provincial forecasts have been incorporated in the Canada outlook, and housing market outlooks have also been produced for 19 select Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs).