Apologies for sounding like a broken record about the state of Ontario’s housing market, but you may want to check on your realtor and homeowner friends, because things have been pretty dire out there — and worsening — for well over a year now.
Politicians continue to emphasize the pressing need for more housing to keep up with the nation’s record immigration-led population growth, but meanwhile, a raft of unsold houses and condo units have been languishing on the market for far longer than usual, especially in the GTA.
As the number of homes switching hands remains at rock-bottom lows, developers have had to radically pull back on new construction, with some even putting entire projects into receivership.
It seems like a never-ending cycle of diminishing sales numbers, less construction and ever-lower confidence in the market from stakeholders on all sides.
And, with prices failing to budge much due to how much sellers paid in the first place — because really, who would be able to stomach a multi-hundred thousand dollar loss? — the drop in sales is perpetuated (with the current economic and political landscape helping drive the pattern, too).
The latest pulse-check from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), published on Tuesday, shows how this worrisome trend is continuing, and the shocking impact it’s had on housing starts in Ontario over the last year.
In the first three months of 2025, there were a staggering 38 per cent fewer homes built than during the same period of 2024, which itself was already a time of declining sales that builders were raising alarm bells over.
Conversely, somewhere like Saskatchewan saw a 97 per cent jump in new home construction year-over-year — the largest acceleration in the country, followed by Quebec (50 per cent) and Manitoba (37 per cent).
It’s mindblowing how low these numbers are compared to our population growth.
— Qiao Shen (@qiaoshen1972) April 15, 2025
Of course, disparities in provincial populations and the actual number of units built can skew these figures greatly.
But don’t worry, the numbers there are just as concerning, with Alberta — which has only about 30 per cent of the population of Ontario — seeing a greater number of housing starts in the first quarter of the year than us (11,470 vs. 10,938). Quebec, with just over half of Ontario’s population, built nearly as many homes as we did in the same timespan (10,137).
On average across Canada, actual housing starts were down 12.5 per cent from 2024 to 2025 in urban areas with a population of 10,000 or greater, and dropped 3.3 per cent nationwide between just the months of February and March.
Though the CMHC does not provide comment on its data in the way that other organizations do, it did touch on Toronto specifically in its release, noting that starts in the city “fell 65 per cent from March 2024, driven lower by decreases in both multi-unit and single-detached starts” — so, all housing types.
There has been some indication that townhomes are still quite in demand in the region lately, with the condo sector experiencing the worst of the downturn.
JohnInNorthYork/Shutterstock.com
