Canada’s Housing Market Has Cracked Wide Open

Canada has long lived off its mythology: a country of opportunity, stability, and growth. But 2025 is stripping away that veneer. For the first time in a generation, the country is experiencing a profound reversal of the very forces that powered its ascent — population, jobs, and GDP — and nowhere are the consequences clearer than in the housing market.

Last year, more than 106,000 Canadians left the country — the largest exodus since the late 1960s. At the same time, Ontario and B.C., the twin engines of the national economy, have registered record-low population growth, a stark reversal for regions once defined by relentless inflows. This hollowing-out of the demographic base isn’t just a number; it’s the erosion of demand, the shrinking of ambition, and the quiet departure of the very people meant to sustain the future.

The labour market tells a similar story of unraveling. Toronto’s unemployment rate has breached 9% for the first time in 15 years. Construction jobs — the bedrock of Canada’s housing-dependent economy — are vanishing by the tens of thousands. The irony is suffocating: even as cranes dot skylines, the hands that once built Canada’s growth are being sidelined. EI claims are surging, unemployment benefits ballooning, and yet the only jobs being created are in government. A private sector once heralded for its resilience is quietly receding.

Housing — once Canada’s great safety blanket — now exposes the fragility. Toronto just suffered its worst July for new home sales in more than 40 years. Inventory has ballooned to nearly 60 months’ supply. Sales volumes are lower than at any point in modern history, plunging beneath the brutal downturns of the 1990s. And in a historical first, more Canadians are signing leases than purchase agreements. Renting has become not just an economic choice, but an existential one: a sign that ownership, the foundation of middle-class identity, has slipped out of reach.

Vancouver, long sheltered by its global allure, is not immune. September numbers reveal prices sliding for a fifth straight month, down to levels last seen in early 2023. Detached homes, once the city’s crown jewel, are now weighed down by foreclosures, while days on market stretch longer with each passing month. Inventory sits well above the 10-year average, foreshadowing further declines.

Meanwhile, the broader economy has hit an iceberg. GDP shrank in the second quarter, with exports collapsing nearly 8% and business investment plummeting. Machinery spending, non-residential construction, the very lifeblood of productivity, is bleeding out. What keeps the economy afloat? Government spending and consumer credit. Households dip into savings to buy cars, Ottawa borrows to mask deficits, and capital flees anything resembling long-term growth. The illusion of stability is preserved only through debt.

The housing correction now unfolding is one of the sharpest on record. Real home prices are down 24% since 2022 — faster than the infamous crashes of the ’80s and ’90s. Affordability remains shattered, even as values fall, because incomes refuse to keep pace. What once felt like a bubble slowly deflating is beginning to look like a collapse.

This is not business as usual. These are not cyclical tremors. Canada stands at a breaking point, where the traditional engines of prosperity — immigration, construction, real estate — are stalling in unison. The housing market, once the nation’s strength, has become its mirror, reflecting every fault line: demographic decline, economic stagnation, political inertia.

The story of 2025 is not just about numbers on a chart. It is about a country forced to reckon with its limits, its illusions, and its future. And the question hanging over it all: is Canada prepared for what comes after the myth of endless growth?


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