Canada Has Never Had More Homes Under Construction At The Same Time

Canada has a lot of housing in the works. CMHC numbers show construction of new houses in the county’s largest cities picked up in May. The increase puts the number of homes being built at an all-time record high.

Canadian Real Estate Under Construction Has Never Been Higher

Residential real estate under construction in Canada’s largest cities reached a record. There were 228,984 units under construction in May, up 0.97% from the month before. This represents an increase of 3.58% from last year. The annual pace of growth is picking up, and the total active construction is a new record.

Canadian Homes Under Construction

The number of homes under construction in Canadian CMAs.

Source: CMHC, Better Dwelling.

Toronto Real Estate Under Construction Just Under Peak

Toronto real estate under construction is just off the record high. There were 71,779 homes under construction in May, down 1.33% from the month before. This represents a 4.59% increase compared to the same month last year. The all-time high was in April, so the city is only slightly down from that number. Still, the city is seeing construction moving faster than the average Canadian city.

Toronto Homes Under Construction

The number of homes under construction in Toronto CMA.

Source: CMHC, Better Dwelling.

Vancouver Real Estate Under Construction Reaches All-Time High

Vancouver real estate under construction reached a new record high. There were 43,964 homes under construction in May, up 4.97% from the month before. This represents an increase of 0.01% from the same month last year. The new record was barely above last year’s high, but it did beat it. Just in time for resales to reach multi-year lows.

Vancouver Homes Under Construction

The number of homes under construction in Vancouver CMA.

Source: CMHC, Better Dwelling.

Montreal Real Estate Under Construction Hits New High

The number of homes being built in Montreal also reached a record high. There were 29,308 homes under construction in May, up 1.19% from last year. This represents a 12.13% increase compared to the same month last year. The new record is more than 60% higher than the median pace of units under construction over the past decade. It’s a huge boom.

Montreal Homes Under Construction

The number of homes under construction in Montreal CMA.

Source: CMHC, Better Dwelling.

The vast majority of homes under construction are apartments, so they take awhile. Multi-family housing takes a long time to build, and a longer time to plan. Most of the demand for the housing currently under construction was made years ago. Softer pre-sales in Toronto and Vancouver are likely to soften future activity. Vancouver is already beginning to postpone the launch of new units.

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37 Comments

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  • MOAR 5 years ago

    Universities are going to have to stop accepting locals so we can fill these puppies up soon.

    • KT 5 years ago

      Assuming this isn’t just xenophobia, what’s this in reference to?

      • Howard 5 years ago

        Putting Canadians first is “xenophobia”?

        • Chris 5 years ago

          Foreign students are subsidizing Canadian. Just look at the fees for domestic and international students in any university website. Without international students, domestic tuitions will increase by atleast 200%.

          • Kelly 5 years ago

            Poorly made cheap crap that multiple generations of the same family can’t pay off! We need a real estate crash, period! How many generations of future citizens futures are we going to sacrifice for small gains for a few. Only way I will invest in a house someone else builds is when apprenticeship becomes mandatory. Employing ticketted guys becomes mandatory. No govt regulation in that regards and way too many uneducated half Witz building crap and stealing from ppl.

        • qt 5 years ago

          #MCGA

          🙂

          • Raj Indulkar 5 years ago

            Quite sure Canada was greatest when the Natives lived one with nature.
            If anything the white (and other) immigrants have ruined the nation and the native people.

          • Raj Indulkar 5 years ago

            Quite sure Canada was greatest when the Natives lived one with nature.
            If anything the white (and other) immigrants have ruined the nation and the native people.

            # MCGA —> the irony in this crap lol

      • Stuart 5 years ago

        Try buying real estate in China or the Philippines as a Canadian. They have laws barring foreign ownership, while Canada allows even warlords from Africa to park their dirty money here in Toronto.

        • Raj Indulkar 5 years ago

          Amen. We are stuck in a tricky loop.

          Foreign money (dirty or otherwise) buying real estate > driving up Toronto real estate prices > baby boomers who own most of Toronto real estate, and are the biggest voting block, happy with higher prices and reflect this with their votes > politicians allow more easy foreign money in

          In reality, blame your mom and dad’s greed.

    • Chris 5 years ago

      The university tuitions are subsidized only because of foreign students. Without foreign students, Canadians will be paying 10 times more for college tuitions. Take a look at any university website and compare domestic and international tuition rates. Foreign students are helping Canadians lower their tuition costs.

  • David Penn 5 years ago

    Toronto needs taller skyscrapers, let the province take over. Let’s assume it takes two people per house. Toronto’s construction industry is 140,000 people large, but was half the size ten years ago? Even though we’ve only had two years of record immigration?

    140,000 New construction builders
    52,000 Realtors

    40,000 teachers

    No need for families and kids being educated. We just need to buy and sell houses. Clear bubble metrics, because the business of building and storing people outpaces the the industry of development for the next generation.

    • Ahmed 5 years ago

      The real irony is immigrants come here because of the high quality education. Then we slash funding for public schools, and chase wealthy immigrants that earn their money overseas, pay little domestic taxes, and send their kids to private schools.

      • Mmr 5 years ago

        Canada should only accept immigrants who has million dollar asset minimum. We dont need poor from third world but only top 1 percent from those countries.

        • Layla 5 years ago

          Haha, you’re an idiot. Clearly from Toronto and not Vancouver, otherwise you would know the wealthier the household, the more likely they are to pay almost nil taxes.

          If you have a million in cash you’re willing to transfer to another country, you would move the US or New Zealand. Canada is only appealing as a mixer for cash obfuscation. It’s literally called “doing immigration jail” on the Mainland.

        • Average Man 5 years ago

          I would rather take the poor from the third world than those coming over with heaps of dirty money.

  • SUMSKILLZ 5 years ago

    Every time I read the word “construction”…I was tempted to add the word “shoddy” in front of it. Cheap materials, overclocked erection/installation schedules, talent spread too thin.

    Last time we saw this in Canada was Montreal’s Olympics.

    • george 5 years ago

      In BC the local government changed the code to allow 12 stories wood building….seeing my friends moving a month ago from their condo due to a neighbor fire (2 story building), I wonder how safe can people inside can be evacuated….unless this approval is tailored towards half occupancy due to flippers and honest foreign capital flowing to keep the economy afloat, than it won’t matter.

  • Ken Morgan 5 years ago

    Criminals need a place to launder and evade taxes. Hopefully we stop this and prices collapse..

    • Stuart 5 years ago

      Campus activists will call the authorities on those they dislike for views, or even a vexatious accusation of an improper view, but they would sign their names as nominees for a numbered Ontario corporation so that a mass murdering genocidal warlord could park his dirty money in Toronto real estate.

  • CanadaSucks 5 years ago

    As I said in a previous comment, Canada economical strategy is to build houses thorough immigration. Immigration and housing are the two main pillars of the Canadian economical strategy . Does not matter which party is in power. Iit has been like that since 1990.

    Canada has what they called the project Century (something like that) where the aim is to increase the population of Canada to 100 millions people by 2200 by slowly increasing yearly immigration number. All political parties agree with that by the way.

    Canadian are too dumb to compete in the manufacturing field or research and development. Canadian are just bright enough to build wooden house and concrete building. China and Japan have economical strategy that does not involve mass immigration.

    I don’t think Canadian economical strategy will work. Canada will dissolve in small nations as the Whites population diminished and loses influence.

    Go youtube and put in the search bar : Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware (Full Documentary) | Future Cities | WIRED

    The documentary explain China economical plan.

    • Capitalist Pig 5 years ago

      Correct. Canada’s strategy is a non-partisan one that’s used by most commonwealth countries. Increasing the tax base is the most important move for them. That means more taxpayers, less dependents, and expensive housing to extract more capital from the warehousing.

  • CanadaSucks 5 years ago

    Here is the link of the Canadian Century project. They are not hiding it either. I got the date wrong, It is 2100. My point, I am not surprised to see more houses under construction because it is part of Canada main economical strategy.

    http://www.centuryinitiative.ca/?lang=fr

    I also agree with the comment that commonwealth nations strategy is to warehousing humans and extract everything they can from them.

    • Stuart 5 years ago

      How is this sustainable? 90% of Canadian land is uninhabitable and the government has no interest in making this land livable.

      This means that the vast increase will be concentrated in the major cities, and Toronto will become worse than Bangladesh traffic, with people walking like ants down Steeles Avenue east, and traffic extending from Barrie to Steeles Avenue every rush hour.

      As a matter of fact, Toronto does feel like Bangladesh and overcrowded, and I notice a huge increase in student visas that to rent a room inside a basement used to be $300-400 five years ago, but now it’s $1,000 and the women are forced to violate their dignity for the Landlord, yet they don’t protest this at their campuses.

    • Joseph 5 years ago

      100 mil by 2100?! NOT A CHANCE! I don’t care how many immigrants are brought in. Even if we ban all contraceptives & abortion, and force people to have sex, there’s no way we get to 100 mil by 2100.

      If true, easily the dumbest goal the government’s ever had. Well, close to the dumbest one…

  • Chris 5 years ago

    Unfortunately a lot of people on the forum are xenophobic and a few are racists too. It is not the immigrants who are buying all these condo’s. It has been proven that it is locals who are buying multiple prebuilt condo’s. Immigrants make up less than 5% of the total condo purchases.

    Canada needs immigrants to increase employment for the locals. Immigrants create jobs. They start new businesses which generate employment. Also there are lots of jobs in the fast food industries and factories where it is extremely difficult to find local workers. Immigrants are hard working and ready to work in Tim Hortons, McDonalds and factories and learn the job. The locals are only interested in making money with the least effort. They all want white collar cushy jobs and not willing to get their hands dirty.

  • Ace 5 years ago

    I live in the outskirts of the GTA , where I think most of these new construction projects are located. Many of the ones that have already been built are rentals or they’re trying to rent them (for prices that most cant afford so they’re just sitting empty for now). The ones in the process of being built (at record speed might I add) are already being advertised for sale or for rent or both. The builders use to sell out faster then they could build them but now the builders have hired their own real estate agents as well as offering better deals in upgrades. In the new build neighbourhood I live, they’ve stopped their future plans to put in more houses. They’ve stopped digging foundations and they’ve sprayed the grass seed down across the flattened mud. It now looks like a half finished community. There are so many houses in my community that have lock boxes on the door so I wonder how many are actually occupied?

  • Zenity 5 years ago

    Canada especially Toronto basically have too much land. With Canada’s economy based on high taxation and universal health care, the system itself is designed to transfer wealth from young people to keep boomers alive. Now with this housing bubble we are doing further wealth transfer where young families have to take on huge mortgages and pay high taxes.

    Once smart people start to realize what is going on those that have in demand skills will leave. Taxing their taxes for future decades and consumer spending with them. The best always leave first because they have the choice. eventually you will be left with low skill labor that you can’t really tax then the health care system goes and the boomers get screw anyways.

    The best way for a society to build wealth is to give resources to young productive talent so they can create business and other ventures. Not tax and suck all their income and transfer it to old and non productive segments of society. If the housing price don’t come down Canada is headed for economic collapse soon.

    I urge all young families to be responsible for you and your families future and consider other places where cost of living is not so high.

  • Jupiter 5 years ago

    let say on average each unit can provide living space for 3 people. with 71,779 we are looking at 215,337 on top of what’s already built. That’s just current construction, don’t forget inventory build up for the past 10 years. Do anyone really think Canada’s population growth is that much? we are talking about 2 million in 10 years here.

    Housing prices needs to correct at least 30% from current prices.

    • slowly boiling frogs 5 years ago

      Actually, for the first time in history, the majority of adults in Canada are living alone. From Gen Z to the oldest baby boomers. It’s another reason for non-stop condo/apartment construction. This large population does not need a house, just a smaller place to live.

  • Jimmy 5 years ago

    I have looked at population growth from stats can. Population growth looks slower so far this year in the first quarter. Especially in BC. Any comments?
    Would love to a report that shows that we have been building houses faster than the population has been grown. The shortage of housing myth is the number one argument pumping up people through fomo to make poor decisions

  • CanadaSucks 5 years ago

    I made some back the envelop calculation for 2019:
    Toronto = 71 779
    Montréal = 20 308
    Vancouver = 43964
    Total = 136 051

    Let say 2 people per unit = 272 102 people

    This number almost match the number of expected immigrant for 2019 of 331 000 for 2019.

    From the link above:

    Canada has welcomed more immigrants in recent years — and the government intends to bring in more. It has set targets of nearly 331,000 newcomers this year, 341,000 in 2020 and 350,000 in 2021.

    https://nationalpost.com/news/greater-share-of-recent-immigrants-landing-jobs-even-as-canada-welcomes-more

    It look that I might be right. Canada economical strategy is to build new houses up to 2100 and using immigrant to fill up these news housesé

    • Moot 5 years ago

      If you are going to post on here, at least spell correctly. Your points are moot and you have little to no knowledge to back them up. Also, using Canada Sucks as your title is offensive. If you don’t like Canada or our market there are other places in the world you can go.

  • Neo 5 years ago

    Why hasn’t this site written an article about Doug Ford’s Bill 108 housing plan with some analysis? It would break the monotony of some of these posts. Most of the Mayors are pissed off about it’s implications.

  • Jimmy 5 years ago

    My math is a little different.

    228,984*2.2= 503,764

    Versus 321 065 new Canadians

    Seems even with record breaking immigration we are building enough shelter.

    • CanadaSucks 5 years ago

      Money laundering. Could this prove that Canada is indeed a money laundering hub because it is building more housing then needed. In a healthy country you would build just enough housing to match population growth.

      Main cities in Canada are Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. So this meant that there are 228,984-
      136 051= 92933 unites that are build outside the main populated cities.

      92933 *2.2 = 204 452 people.

      Either there is a big housing ponzi scheme going on in Canada, or Canada is indeed a international money laundering hub.

      It seems the Rob Fords loves it and he wants to double on either the housing ponzi scheme or money laundering

    • CanadaSucks 5 years ago

      I forgot to add. The law of demand and supply prediect that the price of home is Canada has to come donw because theyre is more supply then demand.

      Let say Canada reach is goal of 321 065 immigrants. The number of new house needed is

      321 065/2.2 = 145 938 unit. If you build 145 938 new unit the supply and demand will match and the price will stay the same. If you build more unit the price will go down.

      This means there is ( 228 984 -145 938 = 83 046) 83 046 unit that are overbuild and won’t find a buyer. Law of supply and demand dictage that price have to come down and new construacet has to stop.

      This is a really positive scenario because it assume that all the new immigrant are rich and can afford to buy overinflated home. I wrote this respond to annoy Moot

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