Canada’s notoriously wild housing market spent much of the last 10 years becoming more unhinged. Affordability was at a crisis level before 2015 and has only gotten worse since.
There are plenty of reasons, but the main ones were extremely low interest rates and unusually high population growth. After the financial crisis of 2008, borrowing costs dropped to emergency low levels and stayed there until inflation took off in 2022.
That acted as rocket fuel for a housing market that was already internationally renowned as a bubble waiting to burst.
Then, in the wake of the pandemic, the federal government dramatically increased the number of new immigrants allowed into Canada.
Canada saw a surge in population just as the cost of a home was reaching all-new heights — and at the same time that the construction industry was clobbered by rising costs and ongoing issues around zoning, permitting and development fees.
Together, these forces have combined to create a nationwide crisis with no real, viable plan to bring housing prices down any time soon.
