The average sale price rose 0.6% year over year in August. The MLS Home Price Index fell 3%.

Those figures are not contradictory. The average changes when the mix of homes and markets being sold changes. The HPI tries to track the price of a comparable home over time. A few more expensive transactions can lift the average while values are still falling across much of the country.

That is not a recovery. It is a reminder that the national average is often the least useful number in the release.

August gave us a more honest signal: listings woke up and buyers did not.

The market has been stuck since May

CREA reported 37,504 sales in August, down 6.9% from a year earlier. Seasonally adjusted activity slipped 0.7% from July and has gone almost nowhere for four months.

That is a stall print, not a crash print.

The distinction matters. A crash creates forced decisions. A stall lets everyone tell themselves a better market is six weeks away. Sellers delay price cuts. Buyers keep watching. Agents talk about the fall market as if the calendar itself produces demand.

New listings rose 3.3% month over month after three declines. But actual listings were still 3.2% below last August, so this was not a flood. It was a seasonal bump that buyers did not match.

The sales-to-new-listings ratio fell from 51.1% to 49.1%. CREA’s long-term average is 54.7%. Months of inventory sat at 4.8 for the fourth consecutive month.

“Balanced” is technically correct. It is not a compliment. Bargaining power is drifting toward buyers even without a dramatic inventory spike.

Every province sold fewer homes than last August

The broadest weakness was not a national price decline. It was the map.

Every province recorded fewer sales than a year earlier. Ontario, the country’s largest market, posted 13,620 transactions, down 6%.

Price performance was much less uniform. The HPI was down 7.1% in the Fraser Valley, 6.1% in Kitchener-Waterloo, 5.6% in Vancouver and 4.5% in the GTA. Meanwhile, Regina was up 3.3%, Winnipeg 2.6%, Montreal 2.3% and St. John’s 7.5%.

St. John’s does not rescue a seller in the GTA. Alberta income supported by higher oil does not pay a Toronto buyer’s mortgage. Prairies and Atlantic Canada are not Ontario and British Columbia with better branding.

Stop saying “the Canadian market” like it is one MLS.

For buyers and sellers, the practical unit of analysis is the local segment: property type, price range, neighbourhood, financing profile and how much competing inventory is actually usable. The national number is context, not a price opinion.

Oil can reach your mortgage before it reaches your listing

Housing was not the only market moving this week.

The episode was recorded after a sharp oil move pushed Brent above $108 and revived inflation concerns. The exact daily close will change. The transmission mechanism will not.

Higher energy costs can feed inflation expectations. That can push bond yields higher. Five-year fixed mortgage rates are priced from that bond market, not from the latest Bank of Canada press conference. CREA’s own economist noted that fixed mortgage rates had already risen with bond yields and that markets were again pricing some risk of a variable-rate hike.

That does not mean one oil spike guarantees higher mortgage rates. It means a buyer waiting for an easy fall-rate rescue is making a macro bet, whether they admit it or not.

Energy markets may get an income boost while expensive housing markets get rate pain. Same country. Different movie.

The Mega Deduction is not a mortgage cut

Ottawa’s Productivity Mega Deduction is real policy, but most housing commentary is putting it in the wrong column.

The proposal expands permanent immediate expensing from a narrow group of assets to roughly two-thirds of capital investment. The federal government says the change would cut Canada’s marginal effective tax rate on new investment from 13% to 6.4%.

For an equipment-heavy operator, infrastructure business or developer buying eligible assets, the timing of deductions can improve a project’s economics. It may change when capital gets deployed.

It does not lower a homebuyer’s five-year fixed rate. It does not make a weak resale condo cash-flow. Most ordinary residential buildings are excluded from the new immediate-expensing treatment.

That is the hierarchy for a real estate pro forma:

1. Mortgage and construction-credit terms.

2. Local revenue, cost and absorption assumptions.

3. Tax treatment for assets that actually qualify.

4. Government announcements that may never reach your file.

Do not move the fourth item to the top because the press release has a large number in it.

A financing pledge is not a construction draw

The Canada Investment Summit produced large commitments and larger headlines. The Prime Minister said pension funds, insurers and institutional investors had committed nearly $100 billion in new capital to Canadian assets. Banks also announced broad financing capacity across energy, critical minerals, defence, AI and infrastructure.

That is useful if your project fits one of those lanes.

A suburban multiplex does not become financeable because a bank put a nine-figure pledge on a summit slide. A mid-market borrower still needs a credit memo that clears, an appraisal the lender accepts and a construction budget with enough contingency.

Committed capacity is not funded capital. A press conference is not a draw schedule.

The sector tags matter more than the round number. If the money is aimed at digital infrastructure or critical minerals, do not casually underwrite it into a housing project.

What buyers, investors and sellers should do with this

Buyers: Use the listing bump. More choice with a softer sales-to-new-listings ratio is leverage, even if the market remains technically balanced. Do not confuse leverage with a guaranteed discount on every good property.

Sellers: Price against competing listings that buyers can actually purchase. August did not produce the fall demand bounce many listing calendars assumed.

Investors: Treat average-price gains as a mix warning, not appreciation evidence. Underwrite the local HPI trend, achievable rent, financing cost and exit liquidity.

Builders and operators: Review the Mega Deduction with a tax adviser asset by asset. The policy may matter for eligible equipment, software and infrastructure. It is not a blanket residential-development subsidy.

Everyone: Watch the quote path. The next CREA release arrives October 16, before the Bank of Canada’s October 28 decision. Housing data will land first. The rate argument comes after.

There is no clean national fall market to call.

Sales are stuck. Sellers added some inventory. Buyers gained a little leverage. Regional prices are moving in different directions, while oil and bond yields are threatening the rate relief many people expected to do the work for them.

Map first. Financing second. National average last.

Listen: Market Updates, Mega Tax Deductions & The Investor Summit on Spotify

Sources: CREA, August 2026 national statistics; Department of Finance, Productivity Mega Deduction; Prime Minister of Canada, Investment Summit remarks; episode script package in Notion.

This article is for educational purposes and is not financial, legal, tax or investment advice.

I joined the chorus, with a qualifier.

If the turn is real, sales volume should improve before prices do. More buyers step in as assets get cheaper. Some sellers refuse the new clearing price and leave the market. The bid-ask spread narrows, transactions resume, and only then do prices get a chance to move.

That is less exciting than calling the exact month of the bottom. It is also more useful.

This episode is unusual because Fred interviews me. We get into where retail capital went, whether condo discounts are investable, what aging will do to housing, and why AI still cannot be trusted to lay pipe on the 70th floor.

The common thread is not recovery. It is dispersion.

Canada no longer has one coherent real estate trade. We have several markets moving at different speeds, with different buyers and completely different tolerances for risk.

The word “bottom” needs a verb

Large investors are already doing things.

Institutional money is recapitalizing or privatizing REITs, buying multifamily, pursuing data centres and looking seriously at seniors’ housing. On the condo side, large funds have been buying standing inventory at discounts that a retail buyer cannot negotiate unit by unit.

The retail investor is mostly somewhere else.

The investor bid has largely disappeared from detached housing. Pre-construction speculation is dead. The exception is small-scale multifamily financed through CMHC’s MLI Select program, where long amortizations and insured debt can make cash flow possible.

That shift was not accidental. Policy tried to move investor capital away from homes competing with owner-occupiers and toward new rental supply. It worked.

Condo developers are studying smaller rental projects they can sell or hold. Former condo investors are looking at builder-grade multiplexes, particularly in Alberta. If insured financing moves down to three- and four-unit buildings, this market could change quickly.

Calling all of that “real estate demand” hides the plot.

Condos may be getting a floor, not a recovery

Retail buyers are starting to ask about completed and resale condos again, but the underwriting has changed.

A buyer may accept that a condo will recover eventually, but still wants rent to carry the debt while waiting. In the interview, I used 75% financing as the rough test. Deals that pass remain rare.

The more interesting signal is below retail.

Large funds are buying blocks of inventory at deep discounts, sometimes below resale values. That does not guarantee a retail bottom. It creates a reference bid where none existed.

My read is that this becomes a more visible retail trend through 2027. First, volume. Price comes later.

Policy is now an operating variable

Real estate people like to talk about policy as if it were weather. It is closer to plumbing. Change a valve and capital moves somewhere else.

The federal foreign-buyer ban is scheduled to expire. I argued that allowing it to lapse would be politically easier than an explicit condo rescue. Provincial taxes and capital controls abroad had already reduced that buyer group, so the impact may be modest.

Tax relief on new housing may matter more. I cited a 160% year-over-year increase in new-home sales following GST/HST relief, while flagging the low base. It is not proof of a rebound. It shows that transaction costs move behaviour.

The practical lesson is blunt: do not underwrite policy as permanent. Model the deal with the incentive, without it, and with it delayed.

“Office” is not an investment thesis

The office numbers make the dispersion impossible to miss.

PwC and ULI report a national vacancy rate of 18.7% in the second quarter of 2025. Core trophy buildings were at 10.6%. Class B and C space was at 25.3%.

Return-to-office mandates are helping the best buildings in major centres. Some large tenants are running out of space. Long leases are attracting interest again.

None of that rescues an obsolete building with the wrong floor plate, weak amenities and no obvious conversion economics.

This is the market we are in: the label on the asset matters less than the building, tenant mix, financing and micro-location. “Office is back” is as careless as “office is dead.”

The aging question is bigger than seniors’ housing

I called aging the most important real estate trend in the Western world over the next 25 years. That is not simply a bullish call on retirement homes.

The harder question is what happens when the largest owner cohort becomes a seller and the next generation cannot afford the same houses at the same price-to-income ratio.

Many older Canadians hold most of their middle-class wealth in a primary residence. Reverse-mortgage balances keep growing because owners want liquidity without moving. Downsizing often means trading a detached house for an expensive bungalow or a condo they do not want. The choices are thin, and staying put is rational.

That creates room for more interesting housing products.

I described a builder offering to construct an accessible garden suite for an older owner, then replace the house with a multiplex. The owner remains on the land long term while the builder receives the new asset out front. It addresses the actual constraint instead of telling a senior to move to a tower.

Other owners may prefer a well-run rental apartment in the same community, sell the house, and be free to lock the door for the winter. Whoever gives this cohort a credible choice will find demand. Whoever treats it as a simple “silver tsunami” trade will discover that seniors’ housing is an operating business with regulation, care and reputational risk attached.

AI has hands now. It still needs judgment.

The most useful AI discussion was not about chatbots writing leasing copy.

AI models already know much of the public internet. The scarce input is practical knowledge trapped in people’s heads: how an experienced inspector reads a foundation, how a foreman sequences a job, how a skilled trade notices that something is wrong before the drawings reveal it.

Smart glasses and local recording tools can capture that work as it happens. An inspector could narrate a walkthrough and receive a draft report. A contractor could turn site observations into estimates and deficiency lists. The value is a reliable system grounded in private, specific data.

That creates a privacy problem. I described experimenting with a local, always-on note-taking system because the data stays on my devices. That tolerance is not universal. Smaller firms can move faster because they carry less compliance burden than a national institution.

Robotics is earlier. A hallucinated paragraph is annoying. A robot making a millimetre-level error in concrete on a 70-storey job is a multimillion-dollar change order. Construction automation will have its moment, but current economics and error rates still matter.

Homeownership may stop being Canada’s default business plan

The final trend is uncomfortable because it sits beneath all the others.

For decades, Canadians treated the principal residence as the default wealth engine. That produced forced savings and enormous household wealth. It also concentrated capital in one illiquid asset.

Millennials and Gen Z are being forced to consider a different arrangement. Some will rent longer and invest elsewhere. Others will buy when the numbers improve. Ownership is becoming a calculation again, not a civic duty.

That change could redirect capital toward entrepreneurship at exactly the moment AI lets a small operator compete with a much larger firm.

What I would do with this

Buyers: Watch transaction volume and the quality of listings, not just the benchmark price. A quiet improvement in sales is more informative than another dramatic bottom headline.

Investors: Underwrite the actual asset and operator. Sector labels are nearly useless when trophy-office vacancy is less than half the Class B/C rate.

Homeowners and sellers: Treat aging-in-place, garden suites and small multiplexes as real planning options, but solve ownership, financing, tax and access questions before touching the structure.

Developers: Run every pro forma with incentives removed. If a deal only works because a temporary policy survives your entire construction period, it does not work yet.

There probably is a bottom forming somewhere in Canadian real estate. It will not arrive as one national index announcing that every asset is safe again.

It will show up first in volume, then in specific buildings, specific buyer groups and specific financing structures. By the time the median price confirms it, the useful part of the turn may already be behind us.

Sources: The Most Important Trends In Real Estate; PwC and ULI, Emerging Trends in Canadian Real Estate 2026; full United States and Canada report. This article is for educational purposes and is not financial, legal, tax or investment advice.

Toronto’s multiplex business just got less cinematic. That may be healthy.

We’re 1 week out from Toronto’s Biggest Multiplex Event - Get Tickets:

https://realist.ca/community/events/unpacking-multiplexes-toronto

Hooman Tabesh told me the last two projects completed by Alliance REIT appraised at cost. In earlier years, he said, the average post-development appraisal had come in about 18% above cost.

That is one operator’s experience, not a market index. It still captures the change in mood. When the appraisal stops handing you instant equity and renters have choices, the work moves to places that rarely make an Instagram reel: leasing during a notice period, reading water meters, inspecting mechanical equipment and answering the neighbour’s phone call.

Hooman is the CEO of Alliance REIT, a Toronto-focused private REIT that says it owns more than 30 boutique multiplexes. He joined me on The Canadian Real Estate Investor to talk about CMHC financing, tenant turnover, development scale and what ten years of operating small buildings has taught him.

The appraisal stopped doing the work

Alliance began as a developer that also managed its finished buildings. Hooman now describes it in the opposite order: a landlord and property manager that develops its own supply.

That reversal is important.

A long-term owner inherits every assumption in the pro forma. If rents come in lower, turnover rises or insurance costs jump, nobody at lease-up cares how elegant the acquisition deck looked.

Hooman said Alliance once underwrote new units around $5 to $5.50 per square foot. Its current underwriting is closer to $4. He also said the company has held rents flat for two years on occupied units because keeping a good resident can be worth more than collecting the permitted increase.

Those are Alliance’s figures, not a rent forecast. The useful point is the direction of the adjustment: the deal has to survive today’s renter, not yesterday’s asking rent.

For a buyer evaluating a development site, run the hold case with a flat appraisal and a sober rent. If the project only works because the stabilized value is comfortably above cost, you are underwriting a rescue rather than an exit.

Seventy turnovers is not seventy empty units

The sharpest number in the interview was tenant turnover.

Hooman said Alliance had historically dealt with roughly 10 to 12 move-outs in a typical year. Over the past year, it handled close to 70. He estimated that as roughly 40% to 45% of the portfolio.

He was equally clear that turnover and vacancy are not the same. Alliance generally replaced outgoing residents within Ontario’s two-month notice period. The units did not sit empty simply because more people moved.

But every turn creates work: showings, screening, cleaning, repairs, keys and the risk of losing rent between tenancies. Hooman put the cost of one empty month in his buildings at roughly $2,500 to $3,000.

His exit interviews produced three recurring explanations. About one-third had bought a home. Another group found condos being offered cheaply by owners who could not sell. The remainder were attracted by two or three free months at new purpose-built buildings.

That mix is revealing. A landlord is competing with homeownership, distressed condo supply and institutional lease incentives at the same time.

Cutting the asking rent is one response. Hooman’s preferred response has been to protect the resident relationship, lease early and reduce the expenses he can actually control.

Small operating habits now carry the return

Some of the best details in this episode were almost embarrassingly ordinary.

Alliance staff submit actual water-meter readings rather than accepting estimated Toronto Water bills. Hooman said the estimates had often been materially higher than usage. The company inspects each property weekly and checks major mechanical systems so a strange noise can be addressed before it becomes a failure. It also looks at heat pumps, appliances, insurance and the time required to turn a unit.

None of those actions creates a dramatic new revenue line. Together, they determine how much of the rent survives.

Small landlords should track when notice arrives, when the replacement lease is signed, the real cost of each turn, water consumption and recurring maintenance calls. A vague sense that a property is “basically cash-flowing” is no longer enough.

Sellers should expect serious buyers to ask for those records. Clean operating data can make a building easier to finance and easier to trust.

CMHC is also underwriting the operator

The episode began with a problem we keep hearing from newer multiplex developers: a site was purchased on one financing assumption, then the borrower discovered that experience mattered more than expected.

The current CMHC MLI Select product sheet says a borrower must demonstrate competence and experience appropriate to the size and type of property. Its general guideline calls for five years of experience managing similar multi-unit properties, either with the borrower or an affiliated corporation. A formal contract with an experienced third-party property manager is an alternative.

Hooman said Alliance did not complete its first CMHC-financed deal until it already had about 60 doors under management.

We discussed whether an experienced operator could partner with a capable first-time developer and lend credibility to the application. Alliance is exploring the idea. It is not a program being offered in this article, and a partner’s name cannot turn weak economics into an insurable loan.

If your original financing plan is failing, get the approved lender, mortgage adviser and experienced operator into the same conversation early. Compare a real partnership with conventional financing, a smaller project or a sale. Do not assume CMHC approval because the building scores well on the public points grid; MLI Select also has borrower and documentation requirements.

A private REIT does not trade like a public REIT

Alliance uses an open-ended REIT structure rather than raising a separate GP/LP vehicle for every property. Hooman described the benefit as continuous capital for a repeatable strategy and the ability to hold the investment in eligible registered accounts.

He also described the hard part: real estate is illiquid while investors may want redemptions. That mismatch requires cash planning around projects, operations and investor requests.

Alliance’s December 2025 fund fact sheet says redemptions are monthly but subject to notice and settlement, and that early-redemption terms apply. The offering memorandum governs. This is not the same liquidity as pressing “sell” on an exchange-listed REIT.

Ask how units are valued, what notice applies, what limits or penalties can delay a redemption, how much cash the manager keeps available and what happens during a rush for the exit. “Evergreen” describes the fund’s life; it does not remove the liquidity problem from the underlying buildings.

The neighbourhood is part of the product

Hooman’s most useful development advice did not involve leverage.

When Alliance buys a site, he introduces himself to the neighbours on each side and across the street. He gives them his number. If dust or noise becomes unreasonable, he wants the call before the city gets it.

He told one crew to stop jackhammering when a neighbour’s child was sleeping. On another site, his team shovelled the adjoining homeowner’s driveway through the winter. She later brought cookies to the trades.

In small infill, the construction site and the eventual rental product share the same street. Neighbour friction can create delays. Neighbour trust can create room to solve a problem.

It also connects to Hooman’s location test: stand at the property and ask, “Would I live here?”

In a rising market with scarce rentals, an inferior unit in a weak location may still fill. In a more balanced market, renters can choose the cheaper condo, the new tower with incentives or the better street. A multiplex without a pool or concierge is selling the neighbourhood as its amenity.

What I would take from this episode

For a first-time developer, start with a scale you can actually supervise. Hooman mentioned details as small as a 15-foot versus 16-foot building width and the space lost when a grandfathered staircase is replaced. That knowledge is earned on drawings and job sites.

For an investor, diligence the operator with the same energy you apply to the property. Ask about turnover, arrears, utility controls, preventive maintenance, appraisal policy and redemption planning.

For a homeowner considering a multiplex conversion, the legal permission to add units is only the beginning. Financing experience, construction logistics, future management and neighbour relations all arrive behind it.

For a seller, document the boring work. In this market, credible expenses and a defensible rent roll may carry more weight than a heroic future appraisal.

The multiplex opportunity has not disappeared. It has matured into a business where the landlord has to earn the spread after the ribbon is cut. That is less cinematic. It is also more durable.

Educational discussion only; not legal, tax, mortgage, real-estate or investment advice, and not an offer or endorsement of any security. Program and fund terms can change. Obtain advice specific to the property, financing and investment before acting.

Part 2 of our housing-policy history: how emergency rates, demand brakes, population reversals and a long-overdue rental pivot created today’s strange reset.Canada came out of the global financial crisis with intact banks, a housing market that barely stumbled and a national story about superior judgment.

Some of that confidence was earned. Our lenders were better regulated than their American counterparts. Mortgage origination was less fraudulent. Ottawa also pulled back the zero-down, 40-year insured loans that had appeared just before the crisis.

But survival taught us something more dangerous: Canadian housing was bulletproof.

That belief became the permission structure for the next fourteen years. Rates stayed low. Mortgage funding stayed deep. Population growth accelerated. Governments installed one demand brake after another, but did very little about rental supply.

We did not remove the housing machine. We put a speed governor on it and kept the engine running.

Watch episode 434 on YouTube, or listen on Spotify.

The post-2008 brake pedal was real

Jim Flaherty’s mortgage tightening was not cosmetic. Between 2008 and 2012, Ottawa walked insured amortizations back from 40 years to 35, then 30, then 25. Refinancing rules tightened. Homes above $1 million became ineligible for insured mortgages.

The government was un-writing the loosest rules of 2006.

The problem was that these restrictions mainly acted on one channel: insured borrowers. The Bank of Canada had cut its policy rate to 0.25%. Canada Mortgage Bonds kept wholesale mortgage funding available. The population was growing. Purpose-built rental construction was still weak.

Every tightening cooled demand for a while. Then the market re-accelerated. That is why the period looks less like a brake and more like a ratchet: policy could slow the climb, but the structure underneath still pushed the same direction.

We became very good at telling buyers “no”

By 2016, the interventions became sharper and more regional.

British Columbia introduced a foreign-buyer tax in Metro Vancouver. Ontario followed with the Non-Resident Speculation Tax. The stress test reached insured borrowers in 2016 and uninsured borrowers through B-20 in 2018.

Those policies mattered. Qualifying at roughly the contract rate plus two percentage points cut a meaningful chunk from maximum borrowing power. Investors and move-up buyers felt B-20 because they often lived in the uninsured channel.

But notice where nearly all the administrative energy went: controlling who could bid, how much they could borrow and where their capital came from.

We got very sophisticated at rationing demand for homes we still were not building.

Then, in 2019, Ottawa launched the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive. CMHC would share equity in a home to help with the down payment. Uptake was weak and the program was eventually cancelled, but the instinct is revealing. When ownership became unaffordable, the reflex was still to help the buyer reach the price.

The pandemic exposed the machine

March 2020 stripped the system down to its wiring.

The Bank of Canada cut the policy rate to 0.25%. Households were stuck at home, work went remote and buyers suddenly wanted space. Cheap leverage met a national scramble for backyards, spare bedrooms and smaller cities.

Prices ran almost vertically into February 2022.

Then inflation forced the fastest hiking cycle in Bank of Canada history. The policy rate moved from 0.25% to 5% in roughly eighteen months. The same leverage that accelerated the boom transmitted the rate shock into household budgets, renewals and resale prices.

Canadian housing had not become immune to cycles. The cycle had simply been delayed and amplified.

The most important 2022 policy was not a rate hike

The loud story in 2022 was the price peak. The quieter story was MLI Select.

CMHC launched the multi-unit mortgage-insurance program to reward rental projects that meet affordability, energy-efficiency and accessibility targets. At the highest point level, new construction can qualify for financing of up to 95% of cost and amortization of up to 50 years. Those are deliberately generous terms. They have to be: the point is to make rental construction pencil after decades in which it often did not. CMHC’s current MLI Select terms set out the trade.

That closes a loop opened in 1981, when the MURB tax program ended. Canada spent the next 41 years with endless variations of buyer assistance and no comparable federal effort to make purpose-built rental finance work at scale.

MLI Select is not charity for developers. It is a policy admission: if the economics do not work, the apartments do not get built.

Today’s board is pulling in four directions

The current market makes no sense if you follow one variable.

CREA’s July 2026 release put the national average sale price at $674,819, up 0.2% from a year earlier. The MLS Home Price Index, which controls better for the mix of homes sold, was down 3.3% year over year and up just 0.1% from June. In plain English: the average looks stable, while the cleaner price measure says the market is still grinding lower. CREA’s July report is a useful warning against trusting a single headline number.

The Bank of Canada held the policy rate at 2.25% on July 15. Money is much cheaper than it was at the 5% peak, but it is nowhere near the free-money conditions of 2020.

Population policy is moving in the opposite direction from the early 2020s. The federal plan targets 380,000 permanent-resident admissions in 2026 and 385,000 new temporary-resident arrivals, while aiming to bring temporary residents below 5% of the population by the end of 2027. IRCC’s current levels plan is now a housing-market document whether it calls itself one or not.

At the same time, mortgage and tax policy have become more generous. Insured mortgages are available on purchases up to $1.5 million. Thirty-year amortizations are open to first-time buyers and buyers of new builds. The federal first-time-buyer rebate can return up to $50,000 of GST on qualifying new homes, with relief phasing out between $1 million and $1.5 million. CRA explains the current rebate here.

Slower population growth. Looser ownership credit. Better rental financing. Weak overall construction. Softer benchmark prices. None of these forces cancels the others cleanly.

That is the market.

What operators should take from it

For buyers, a longer amortization or tax rebate changes the entry math, not the underlying price. Underwrite the payment after renewal, not only the payment offered today. Do not mistake extra borrowing room for a discount.

For investors and developers, MLI Select is a serious financing tool, but the cheap capital comes with commitments and execution risk. Slower immigration and rising vacancy in some markets also mean a rental pro forma needs more than a national shortage story.

For homeowners approaching renewal, competition matters. OSFI no longer prescribes its minimum qualifying rate for an uninsured straight switch where the balance and amortization do not increase. That does not guarantee approval, but it may give borrowers more room to shop instead of accepting the first renewal offer.

For sellers, the national average is mostly theatre. The gap between the average price and the HPI already shows how composition distorts the headline. Local inventory, employment and property type will decide whether you are selling into a recovery or a continuing correction.

The useful question is not whether Canadian housing is bullish or bearish.

It is which policy lever reaches your market first.

Canada did not prove housing was safe in 2008. It proved the system could absorb one crisis, then spent fourteen years leaning harder on the same machine. The next cycle will come from the collision now underway: lower population growth, looser credit for selected buyers, a rental-finance revival and a construction pipeline that remains too thin.

Stop reading the market like weather. Read the policy calendar.

This article is educational and is not financial, legal, tax, mortgage or investment advice.

Prices rise. Rates fall. A city gets hot. A market cools. We describe the outcome, then invent a story about supply, demand or national psychology.

But the deeper story is more deliberate. Canada’s housing system was built through a century of policy choices: who could lend, how much buyers could borrow, which risks taxpayers would absorb, which gains would be taxed and which forms of housing were worth subsidizing.

The market is what happened downstream.

In this episode of The Canadian Real Estate Investor, Nick Hill and I trace the first half of that history—from the fragile mortgage contracts of the 1920s to zero-down, 40-year insured mortgages in 2006.

Listen to the episode

The original mortgage system was built to break

In 1926, home financing looked nothing like a modern mortgage.

A typical borrower needed roughly half the purchase price in cash. The loan might run for three to five years, with interest-only payments and the full principal due at the end. There was no long amortization steadily paying down the balance.

The arrangement worked only if the borrower could refinance when the balloon payment arrived.

Then the Depression removed the next lender. Property values fell, incomes disappeared and refinancing dried up. The problem was not merely that the economy turned. The product itself had no protection against a bad credit cycle.

Ottawa responded with the Dominion Housing Act in 1935 and the National Housing Act in 1938. These were early, limited moves, but they established a principle that would define the next century: housing finance was now a federal policy concern.

When Ottawa wanted housing, it built housing

The Second World War created a different emergency. Industrial employment surged, workers moved to production centres and cities faced acute shortages.

In 1941, the federal government created Wartime Housing Limited and became a direct builder. A Parliament of Canada history credits the Crown corporation with 45,930 units over eight years.

The federal response was not a buyer credit, an insured loan or a tax-preferred savings account. It was finished housing.

When Wartime Housing’s assets moved into the newly created CMHC in 1946, the federal government retained the machinery of housing policy—but its most important future role would be financial rather than physical.

1954: the invention of modern Canadian leverage

The decisive shift came in 1954.

Public mortgage insurance reduced the lender’s exposure to borrower default, and chartered banks entered mortgage lending. A CMHC historical review explains that the system created a nearly risk-free mortgage investment for lenders and increased the supply of private funds.

This is the origin of a central Canadian housing bargain: use the public balance sheet to make private mortgage credit deeper, cheaper and more widely available.

It worked. Homeownership stopped being a product only for households capable of producing enormous down payments. Millions of Canadians gained access to housing and long-term wealth formation.

But it was still a choice. Default risk did not disappear; it moved. Once that lever existed, governments could keep adjusting how much credit the system would create.

1972: the house becomes Canada’s favourite tax shelter

Canada introduced capital-gains taxation through the 1972 tax reform while exempting qualifying principal residences.

The Department of Finance describes the exemption as a policy intended to recognize shelter and make it easier for families to move. Its behavioural effect is broader: leveraged gains on a principal home can accumulate tax-free.

Combine that exemption with insured mortgage credit and the incentive becomes powerful. For an ordinary household, a larger owner-occupied home is not only shelter. It is also one of the few investments that can be heavily financed and sold without tax on the qualifying gain.

Canadians did not become obsessed with housing in a vacuum. The rules taught them where to store wealth.

The MURB lesson: supply responds when the incentive is real

Not every policy pushed ownership demand.

In 1974, the federal Multiple Unit Residential Building program allowed investors to use capital-cost-allowance losses from qualifying rental buildings against other income. It made apartment construction attractive to private capital.

A CMHC program evaluation estimated that about 170,000 MURB units were completed or under construction by the end of 1980. The measure ended in 1981.

The larger lesson is not that one tax rule can solve housing. It is that supply responds when policy makes projects economically viable. Canada spent decades adding tools that helped buyers assemble more purchasing power, while letting major rental-building incentives fade.

Demand support is politically immediate. Supply takes years. That timing problem has shaped almost every housing cycle since.

Policy moves the map, too

There has never been one Canadian housing market.

In the 1970s, political and language changes in Quebec contributed to corporate head offices and capital shifting from Montreal toward Toronto. Western Canada moved to the rhythm of oil booms, the National Energy Program and commodity busts. Around the 1997 Hong Kong handover, migration and capital helped turn Vancouver into a more globally connected market.

Local fundamentals still matter. But the centre of gravity moves when federal policy, provincial policy and global capital flows change the incentives around a city.

That is why a national headline can be directionally right and practically useless for a buyer in Calgary, an apartment owner in Montreal or a seller in the GTA.

The 1989 crash broke the “always up” story

Falling interest rates and speculation drove Toronto into a late-1980s peak. The subsequent decline lasted years, not months.

CMHC’s long-run house-price series shows the national index peaking in 1989, dropping through the early 1990s and remaining below that nominal level until the early 2000s.

That is the uncomfortable history hidden by a long bull market. Policy can expand credit and soften downturns. It cannot repeal cycles, eliminate regional risk or guarantee a quick recovery.

From RRSP down payments to a global mortgage conveyor belt

The response to the early-1990s slump was a new era of easier financing.

The Home Buyers’ Plan arrived in 1992, letting buyers withdraw RRSP funds for a down payment. A Finance Canada history notes that the temporary measure became permanent in 1994.

Five-per-cent down payments became increasingly normal. Then, in June 2001, CMHC introduced the Canada Mortgage Bond program.

The CMB program connected insured mortgages to domestic and international bond investors through government-guaranteed securities. Lenders could fund mortgages at scale, recycle capital and originate more loans.

This plumbing is less visible than a down-payment rule, but arguably more important. It connected global pools of low-risk capital directly to Canadian household borrowing.

By 2006, insured mortgage rules had expanded to 40-year amortizations and zero-down loans. A Bank of Canada staff paper documents how quickly the limits moved that year.

Canada had travelled from 50% down and a five-year balloon to 100% financing stretched over four decades.

What buyers and investors should take from this history

• Read policy before reading sentiment. Down-payment rules, insurance limits, tax treatment and mortgage funding can matter more than a month of sales data.

• Separate access to credit from affordability. A rule that lowers the monthly payment can also let buyers bid more for the same housing stock.

• Never confuse a government backstop with a guaranteed investment return. Insurance protects the lender; it does not protect the owner’s equity.

• Match the analysis to the region. Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Alberta have repeatedly lived through different cycles.

• Stress-test the holding period. The 1990s showed that recovering from a housing peak can take more than a decade.

What sellers and homeowners should understand

The tax treatment of a principal residence is a major advantage, but it should not turn one asset into an entire retirement strategy.

Policy can create purchasing power, and purchasing power can support prices. It can also be reversed. The same government that loosens insurance or amortization rules can tighten them when debt and speculation become political risks.

For sellers, the most important buyer is often the marginal borrower. A change that reduces that buyer’s financing capacity can affect market value faster than local homeowners expect.

The bottom line

Canada’s housing market was never simply the product of population growth, scarce land or cultural preference.

It was engineered through mortgage insurance, tax exemptions, rental incentives, savings programs and government-guaranteed funding. Those decisions expanded ownership and created enormous wealth. They also concentrated household balance sheets, pulled demand forward and made housing unusually sensitive to policy.

The practical edge is to stop treating the market like weather.

Somebody signed something. The next cycle will have a signature, too.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial, legal, tax, mortgage or investment advice.

Canada’s next wave of housing developers may not look like developers at all.

They may be homeowners with an oversized lot. Professionals leaving corporate careers. Small investors who know their neighbourhood better than a national builder ever will. Or two partners who can see five or six homes where everyone else still sees one detached house.

Architect and developer Noam Hazan calls them citizen developers. In this episode, he makes a compelling case that Toronto’s missing middle is one of the most alive parts of Canadian real estate.

See Noam at our Upcoming Event on September 15:

He also explains why the opportunity is easy to misunderstand.

A fourplex is small compared with a condo tower. It is not simple. It combines planning, building-code interpretation, construction financing, tax rules, tenant operations and project management. The policy stack can improve a good deal. It cannot rescue a bad one.

That is the central lesson: the citizen developer wins through execution, not permission alone.

Listen to the full episode

The Rise of the Citizen Developer — Episode 431

Why the missing middle is finally moving

Hazan trained and worked in the U.K., New York and London before launching his Toronto studio. In Europe, converting larger houses into two or three homes is ordinary urbanism. Toronto is different: many central neighbourhoods still place detached houses beside transit, jobs and world-class amenities.

The policy is beginning to catch up with the land value.

Toronto approved city-wide permissions for multiplexes with up to four dwelling units in 2023. The city is also studying broader six-unit permissions after allowing sixplexes in Ward 23. That does not guarantee a permit on every lot, but it changes the starting point. The question is increasingly not whether gentle density belongs in a neighbourhood, but whether a specific site can support it.

This is where the citizen developer emerges. A local owner can assemble a site, a professional team and capital without needing the overhead of a large development company. Hazan says most of his multiplex clients fit this description. Two clients went from corporate careers to roughly 15 projects, using his studio on seven or eight of them.

The path is real. So is the learning curve.

Four units change zoning. Five units change financing

The capital structure can shift dramatically when a project crosses from four units to five.

CMHC’s MLI Select program requires at least five units. It rewards affordability, energy efficiency and accessibility with mortgage-insurance flexibilities. For standard rental housing, CMHC lists a minimum debt-coverage ratio of 1.10. Depending on the point tier and whether the project is new or existing, the program can offer longer amortization periods and higher loan-to-value or loan-to-cost limits.

The federal purpose-built rental housing rebate changes another part of the equation. It can rebate 100% of the GST, or federal portion of HST, paid on qualifying new rental construction. The building generally needs at least four self-contained apartments or 10 private rooms, and at least 90% of the units must be held for qualifying long-term rental use. Construction timing and other conditions also apply.

These programs matter. But treating them as free money is how people get hurt.

MLI Select comes with underwriting, documentation, experience, liquidity and completion requirements. The rental rebate comes with detailed eligibility and tax rules. A project must still carry its land cost, soft costs, construction budget, interest, delays and realistic rent roll.

Design is an operating strategy

The best part of the episode is how quickly the conversation moves from policy to details that tenants actually feel.

Many of Hazan’s projects sit on lots roughly 25 feet wide. The challenge is fitting family-sized units into that envelope without making them feel compromised. Bigger windows, useful space under stairs and efficient kitchens can create comfort without wasting square footage.

Then there is egress. Hazan says his studio now tries to give each unit direct access instead of defaulting to a large secondary rear staircase. On the projects he described, eliminating that staircase can save an estimated $50,000 to $70,000.

That is value engineering: changing the design so the building works better and costs less.

Cutting soundproofing would be the opposite. Hazan argues that noise is one of the biggest reasons tenants leave, so his projects add concrete topping and additional sound insulation between wood-frame units. The extra cost supports longer tenancies and a more durable rental operation.

The cheapest building is not always the one with the lowest construction quote. It is the one that avoids expensive redesigns, premature turnover and operational headaches.

A small building still needs a big team

The episode’s most useful reality check is the list of people who may touch a multiplex: architect, surveyor, arborist, mechanical and structural engineers, energy consultant, accessibility consultant, planner, planning lawyer, real estate lawyer, partnership lawyer, accountant or rebate specialist, appraiser, lender, contractor, project manager, property manager and real estate agent.

Not every project needs every specialist. Every project does need someone coordinating the sequence.

One weak handoff can cost weeks. One misunderstood code detail can force a redesign. One incomplete financing assumption can leave an owner carrying the property while approvals move more slowly than expected.

Hazan is generally positive about Toronto’s support for density, including strong committee-of-adjustment outcomes. His frustration is inconsistency. He described wall assemblies accepted on more than 25 multiplex files, then rejected by another examiner, adding roughly two weeks of back-and-forth. He wants accepted alternative building-code solutions made public so teams can rely on precedent instead of solving the same problem repeatedly.

That is not an argument against multiplexes. It is an argument for schedule contingency and experienced consultants.

What buyers and investors should do

Start with feasibility, not the listing description.

Before paying for supposed “development potential,” confirm the lot dimensions, current zoning, servicing, tree constraints, access, building envelope and likely unit mix. Then underwrite rents and costs for the homes you can actually build—not the maximum number mentioned in a headline.

If you are new, Hazan’s advice is to start slower. A fourplex plus a garden suite can be a more manageable first project than a major-street development. It is still a serious undertaking, but the complexity is more contained.

The builder may be the most important partner. CMHC construction financing can require an experienced team, and a contractor who misses the budget can erase thin development margins. A basement suite or single-family renovation is useful experience; it is not automatically proof that someone can deliver a five-unit building.

What sellers and homeowners should understand

Multiplex permissions can expand the buyer pool for the right property, but they do not make every lot a development site.

A wide lot with clean access and favourable constraints may attract builders or partnerships. A difficult tree, awkward servicing, shallow depth or unrealistic asking price can consume the density premium. If you are considering developing your own property, spend money first on a disciplined feasibility review—not on renderings of a building that may never be approved or financed.

If the finished project will remain a rental, design for the tenant from day one. Natural light, storage, acoustic separation, efficient layouts and independent access are not cosmetic. They are part of the business plan.

The bottom line

Toronto has created permission for more small-scale housing. CMHC and tax policy can make rental projects easier to finance. A growing network of architects, builders, lenders and owners now understands the product.

That combination is producing a new developer class.

But the word “citizen” should not be confused with “amateur.” The people who succeed will behave like professionals: start with feasibility, build the right team, protect the schedule, underwrite conservative rents and treat construction cost as the variable that can make or break the deal.

The opportunity is not that anyone can build a multiplex.

It is that more people can—if they respect the complexity.

Listen to the full conversation on Apple Podcasts.

If you are working through a multiplex project in Toronto, join us at Unpacking Multiplexes on September 15.

This article is for educational purposes only and is not financial, legal, tax or investment advice.

Four years after the 2022 peak, the Canadian housing market is finally showing signs of a floor.

National sales have risen for three straight months. Prices stopped falling in June. Inventory tightened. And in Ontario, the pipeline for new single-family homes has thinned to levels not seen in decades.

That sounds bullish—until you look at the household balance sheet.

More than 13,000 Canadians filed for insolvency in June, up 11.5% from a year earlier and 5.7% from May. The country is now running near the insolvency levels seen during the global financial crisis.

So which story is real?

Both of them.

The market may be finding a bottom, but it is not doing so because buyers suddenly feel rich or because the economy is roaring back. It may be finding a bottom because sellers are pulling listings, builders have stopped building, and lower prices plus lower borrowing costs are finally bringing a small amount of demand off the sidelines.

That is a floor. It is not yet a recovery.

The case that the bottom is forming

The latest national data finally moved in the same direction for more than one month.

According to CREA’s June 2026 report, home sales rose 0.5% from May. That followed a 5.5% jump in May and a 0.9% increase in April, leaving sales roughly 7% above the March low.

The national MLS Home Price Index was flat month over month. That may not sound exciting, but after a long correction, “not falling” matters. Markets usually stabilize in stages: transaction volume improves first, inventory tightens next, and prices respond last.

BMO economist Robert Kavcic has described the current phase as the price-destruction portion of the cycle running its course—especially for single-family homes. His important caveat is that a return to strong price growth is still some distance away, and the condo market remains weaker. BMO’s housing analysis makes the same distinction we keep stressing on the podcast: there is no single Canadian housing market.

Nationally, there were 4.8 months of inventory at the end of June, the lowest level so far in 2026 and close to the long-run average. But that balanced national number hides radically different markets by region, property type, neighbourhood and quality.

A renovated family home in a supply-constrained neighbourhood can receive multiple offers while an investor condo a few kilometres away sits for months. Both transactions appear in the same “Canada” headline. They are not the same market.

This floor may be built on shrinking supply

Here is the uncomfortable part of the bullish case: some of the apparent stabilization is happening because supply is disappearing.

New listings have started to ease. Builders are cancelling or delaying projects that no longer pencil. Ontario single-family completions have fallen to levels last seen around 1990, according to the housing data discussed in this episode. Toronto condo starts are also collapsing from recent norms.

That can create a price floor without creating a healthy market.

If fewer owners list and fewer builders complete homes, the available inventory can tighten even when demand remains historically weak. It is the housing equivalent of a store looking busy because half the shelves are closed.

This is why “the market bottomed” and “the market is strong” are not interchangeable statements.

A supply-driven bottom can still be real. It can also be fragile. If unemployment rises, mortgage renewals create forced sales, or bond yields push fixed mortgage rates higher, more listings could arrive before demand is ready to absorb them.

The insolvency data is the counterweight

The June insolvency figures are a warning against getting carried away.

Canada recorded more than 13,000 insolvency filings during the month. That was an 11.5% increase from June 2025 and a 5.7% increase from May, according to figures from the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy reported by The Canadian Press.

Most filings were consumer insolvencies. The pressure is straightforward: high household debt, stagnating purchasing power and mortgage payments resetting at higher rates.

Insolvencies do not automatically produce a wave of distressed home sales. Canadian borrowers often cut spending, refinance, sell other assets or use a proposal long before a lender takes possession. But the trend matters because it tells us how thin the household cushion has become.

A market can stabilize at the same time its weakest participants are being forced out.

That is not a contradiction. It is price discovery.

Bottom does not mean boom

Calling a bottom is emotionally satisfying because it sounds like certainty. In reality, bottoms are processes, not dates.

The most likely path from here is not another 2020–2022 surge. It is a slow, uneven and highly regional grind:

• Sales volumes recover before prices.

• Quality properties move; compromised properties linger.

• Single-family homes stabilize before investor-heavy condos.

• Supply-constrained markets firm while weaker employment markets remain soft.

• Fixed mortgage rates stay vulnerable to inflation and global bond-market shocks.

We may look back and decide the national market bottomed in the middle of 2026. But even if that turns out to be right, some cities and property types could still fall further.

What buyers should do

Do not buy because an economist used the word “bottom.” Buy because the property works for your life and the payment still works under a stress scenario.

That means comparing the monthly cost of ownership with the realistic cost of renting, keeping a proper emergency fund, and testing the payment against a renewal rate that is higher than today’s best advertised rate.

Most importantly, negotiate the property in front of you—not the national headline. In a split market, condition, location and seller motivation matter more than the average benchmark price.

What investors should do

Underwrite the deal with today’s rent and today’s financing. Treat appreciation as optional.

The current market rewards durable cash flow, conservative leverage and properties with multiple exit paths. It punishes thin spreads, heroic rent assumptions and the belief that every unit will recover at the same speed.

If your thesis depends on a sharp rebound next year, it is not an investment thesis. It is a timing bet.

What sellers and homeowners should understand

Price discovery has returned. Buyers have data, choice and patience. A stale listing usually becomes harder—not easier—to sell.

If you need to transact, price to the most recent comparable sale, not to the 2022 memory of the property. If a mortgage renewal is approaching, model the payment now and speak with a broker early. Optionality is most valuable before you need it.

The bottom line

The Canadian housing market has absorbed several major shocks: the fastest rate-hiking cycle in decades, an affordability crisis, a collapse in investor demand and years of falling real prices.

The fact that sales are rising and national prices have stopped sliding deserves attention.

But this is not a victory lap.

The floor appears to be forming while household stress is still climbing and the construction pipeline is breaking. That combination could stabilize prices in the short run while creating the next supply problem in the long run.

The best description is not “the market is back.”

It is this:

Canada may be finding a housing floor—but it is a floor built by scarce supply, cautious demand and very little room for error.

Listen to the full conversation on Apple Podcasts, or use the player above.

If you are working through a multiplex project in Toronto, join us at Unpacking Multiplexes.

This article is for educational purposes only and is not financial, legal or investment advice.

Listen to the full episode:

The Intelligence Shift: AI Isn’t Replacing Real Estate. It’s Rewiring It.

This post is probably going to upset some Realtors.

Not because AI is about to replace every agent, appraiser, mortgage broker, lawyer, developer, or tradesperson in one clean sweep.

It is more uncomfortable than that.

AI is not replacing real estate. It is rewiring the parts of real estate that were always information businesses pretending to be relationship businesses.

And the clearest signal may be the Real Brokerage / RE/MAX deal.

Real Brokerage announced an agreement to acquire RE/MAX Holdings in a transaction implying an enterprise value of about $880 million. The combined company, expected to be called Real REMAX Group, would have more than 180,000 agents, nearly 8,500 franchisees and offices, operations in more than 120 countries and territories, and pro forma 2025 revenue of roughly $2.3 billion before synergies. RE/MAX shareholders can elect either 5.15 shares of the new combined company or $13.80 in cash, but the cash pool is capped between $60 million and $80 million. Real shareholders are expected to own about 59% of the combined company, while RE/MAX shareholders are expected to own about 41%, subject to closing conditions and approvals.

On paper, it is the perfect old-world-meets-new-world deal.

RE/MAX has the brand, the balloon, the franchise network, the consumer recognition, the global footprint, and the agents.

Real has the cloud brokerage model, the AI narrative, the proprietary software, the lower-overhead operating structure, and the public-market growth story.

But the market reaction tells a more complicated story.

As of May 11, 2026, Real Brokerage was trading around $1.95 and RE/MAX Holdings around $9.99. At that Real share price, the 5.15-share stock consideration is worth about $10.04, far below the original $13.80 headline value and only slightly above where RE/MAX was trading.

That does not mean the deal fails.

It means the market is pricing risk.

Deal risk. Integration risk. Stock consideration risk. Shareholder approval risk. And maybe something bigger: the possibility that putting a tech-forward brokerage and a legacy franchise network together does not automatically solve the structural problem facing both.

Legacy brokerages have distribution but need modernization.

Tech brokerages have software but still need agents, transaction volume, and distribution.

That is the real story.

This is not simply a story about one brokerage buying another brokerage. It is a signal that the old real estate growth model is under pressure.

For years, the model was agent count, transaction volume, cheap credit, rising home prices, and a belief that liquidity would eventually bail everyone out.

Now the industry has to answer a harder question:

What replaces that?

The answer is not “AI replaces Realtors.”

The answer is that AI attacks the information layers of real estate first.

Search. Listing creation. Valuation. Mortgage underwriting. Document review. Due diligence. Project management. Leasing. Asset operations.

Anywhere real estate is really a data problem, a document problem, a workflow problem, or a pattern-recognition problem, AI is coming quickly.

Anywhere real estate is physical, emotional, negotiated, relationship-driven, or dependent on skilled hands in messy real-world environments, AI is much slower.

That distinction is everything.

The brokerage model is becoming a technology distribution problem

The Real / RE/MAX deal matters because it shows both sides of the industry trying to solve each other’s weakness.

RE/MAX has what every tech brokerage wants: distribution. It has agents, franchisees, market presence, consumer awareness, and an international network that would take decades to build organically.

Real has what legacy brokerages want: a modern technology stack, a cloud brokerage structure, an AI-enabled operating story, and the ability to pitch agents on speed, tools, economics, and automation.

The bull case is obvious.

Real pushes its technology through the RE/MAX network. RE/MAX gets a modernization path. The combined company cuts duplicated public-company and back-office costs. Agents get better tools. Franchisees get more productivity. The company gets more data and more opportunities to attach mortgage, title, insurance, lead-gen, and other services to the transaction.

The company itself says it expects about $30 million in annual run-rate cost synergies, largely from shared services, public-company costs, corporate functions, and technology efficiencies.

But the bear case is just as obvious.

What if the problem is not that legacy brokerages lack software?

What if the problem is that the entire brokerage industry is still too dependent on transaction volume, agent count, and commission economics that are already under pressure?

What if distribution without margin is not enough?

What if technology without transaction flow is not enough?

That is why the market reaction matters. The public market is not just asking whether the deal closes. It is asking whether the deal creates value.

And that question applies far beyond Real and RE/MAX.

Every brokerage is about to face the same test.

Can you use AI to make agents more productive, consumers better informed, and transactions less painful?

Or are you just wrapping software around the same old model?

Search and selling are already changing

The most visible layer of AI in real estate is search.

Consumers may not think of property search as AI, but it increasingly is.

Recommendation engines learn what buyers click on, save, ignore, revisit, and share. They infer preferences that buyers may not even be able to articulate. They surface homes that do not perfectly match the original search criteria but may match the buyer’s actual behaviour.

For sellers, the marketing stack has changed even faster.

Listing descriptions can be generated in seconds. Photos can be enhanced. Rooms can be virtually staged. Social ads can be targeted automatically. Leads can be routed, scored, followed up with, and re-engaged by AI.

The boring administrative work around selling a property is being compressed.

That does not make the agent irrelevant.

It changes what the agent has to be good at.

The agent who used to win by controlling access to information is in trouble.

The agent who can interpret information, negotiate effectively, manage emotion, understand local nuance, and guide a client through risk is still extremely valuable.

That is the new division of labour.

AI handles the first draft, the first filter, the first comparison, the first pass.

Humans handle judgment.

Deloitte’s 2025 commercial real estate outlook found that 76% of surveyed commercial real estate organizations were researching, piloting, or in early-stage implementation of AI processes and solutions. Deloitte also found that 81% of respondents identified data and technology as the area where they were most likely to focus spending for the coming year.

In Canada, Statistics Canada found that real estate and rental and leasing businesses planning to adopt AI software rose from 10.9% in Q2 2024 to 18.6% in Q2 2025.

Those are not dominant numbers yet.

But the direction is clear.

Valuation is where AI is powerful — and dangerous

Valuation is the part of the AI story where everyone should be both excited and humble.

Automated valuation models are useful. They are getting better. They can process comparable sales, market trends, property features, rental data, and neighbourhood-level information much faster than any human.

For broad market analysis, they are valuable.

For portfolio screening, they are valuable.

For identifying potential mispricing across thousands of properties, they are valuable.

But for deciding exactly what one specific property is worth on one specific day in one specific neighbourhood, AI still has limits.

Zillow learned this the hard way.

In 2021, Zillow announced it would wind down Zillow Offers, its iBuying business, after concluding that the unpredictability of forecasting home prices exceeded what it had anticipated. The company said the wind-down would include a reduction of approximately 25% of its workforce. Zillow also reported a roughly $304 million inventory write-down in Q3 2021 and expected an additional $240 million to $265 million of losses in Q4 tied mainly to homes it expected to purchase.

That is one of the most important AI lessons in real estate.

The lesson is not that AI valuations are useless.

The lesson is that valuation is not just data.

Valuation is local knowledge, buyer psychology, liquidity, timing, street-by-street nuance, property condition, seller motivation, financing conditions, and market narrative.

An algorithm can be directionally right and financially wrong.

And in real estate, being wrong by 3% can destroy the deal.

That matters even more in Canada, where hyperlocal differences are extreme. A property on one side of a Toronto neighbourhood can behave differently from a property two streets over. A Montreal plex can price differently from a nearly identical building beside it because of layout, tenants, deferred maintenance, zoning potential, or financing constraints.

So the right model is not “AI replaces appraisers.”

The right model is “AI does the first pass, humans handle the exceptions.”

Use AI to narrow the range.

Use human expertise to understand the property.

Mortgages may change faster than brokerage

The mortgage process is one of the most obvious places for AI to create immediate value.

Why?

Because mortgages are full of documents, rules, repetitive checks, income verification, fraud detection, policy matching, and exception handling.

That is exactly the kind of workflow AI is good at.

The clean files get automated.

The messy files get escalated.

The human underwriter does less document chasing and more actual judgment.

In mortgage lending more broadly, STRATMOR Group reported that 38% of lenders were using AI or machine learning for tasks such as document classification and indexing, while 48% were using robotic process automation to streamline tasks like ordering appraisals and credit scores.

In Canada, this is already showing up. CMLS Financial has said it built an end-to-end AI-driven approval process and that about 10% of its loans are currently fully committed using rules-based algorithms. A CMLS executive also framed the goal as eliminating repetitive, low-value tasks so people can focus on product development, training, and complex deal structuring.

Scale AI is also backing a Canadian mortgage-processing project involving Blanc Labs and The Mortgage Trail to automate extraction, classification, and validation of borrower documents such as income statements and bank records.

That is where the mortgage of 2030 starts to look very different.

Pre-approvals become faster.

Document verification becomes faster.

Fraud detection improves.

Rate and product recommendations become more dynamic.

The borrower experience starts to feel less like a multi-week paper chase and more like a real-time financial workflow.

But there is a serious caveat.

AI underwriting can also encode historical bias if the models are trained on biased historical data. If past approvals reflected unequal access to credit, the model can learn those patterns and reproduce them.

So the opportunity is real, but the governance matters.

In lending, speed without explainability is dangerous.

Construction is not immune — but the impact is different

AI in construction is misunderstood.

Most people imagine robots replacing tradespeople on job sites.

That is not the main story.

The main story is design, coordination, estimating, scheduling, procurement, risk management, and building operations.

AI tools connected to building information modelling can help identify conflicts before construction begins. Estimating tools can read drawings, count components, and assist with quantity takeoffs. Scheduling tools can flag conflicts before they become delays. Building systems can optimize energy use in real time.

This matters because construction has a brutal productivity problem.

McKinsey has argued that construction is one of the least digitized sectors in the world and that global construction labour-productivity growth averaged only 1% annually over two decades, compared with 2.8% for the total world economy and 3.6% for manufacturing. McKinsey also estimated that construction productivity catching up with the broader economy could add $1.6 trillion in value, and that action across seven areas — including digital technology, new materials, advanced automation, and reskilling — could boost productivity by 50% to 60%.

Canada already has real examples.

Cadillac Fairview deployed AI-enabled HVAC optimization across major office properties including TD Centre, RBC Centre, Simcoe Place, Toronto Eaton Centre office properties, and Calgary City Centre. The program now covers 12 teams across CF office buildings representing 9.5 million square feet, with reported benefits including reduced utility cost, energy consumption, peak demand, and carbon emissions.

That is not theoretical AI.

That is operational AI inside Canadian real estate assets right now.

The biggest near-term impact in construction is not replacing the worker on site.

It is reducing rework, compressing timelines, improving cost visibility, optimizing buildings, and making scarce labour more productive.

The skilled trades are different

The skilled trades are the part of this story where the “AI replaces everyone” narrative breaks down.

Electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, carpenters, welders, and mechanics are not primarily doing abstract information work.

They are working in physical environments that are messy, variable, constrained, and different every time.

Wiring a panel in an old house, diagnosing a plumbing issue behind a wall, installing HVAC in a custom build, repairing equipment in the field — these are physical, context-heavy, judgment-heavy tasks.

AI can help the trades.

It can help with diagnostics.

It can help with quoting.

It can help with scheduling.

It can help with parts identification.

It can help with preventive maintenance.

But it does not easily replace the human being with the tools, the hands, the experience, and the ability to adapt on site.

And Canada has a much bigger issue than AI displacement: not enough tradespeople.

The federal government has said approximately 700,000 skilled trades workers are expected to retire in Canada by 2028.

BuildForce Canada says that in construction alone, roughly 245,100 workers are expected to retire over the next 10 years, while about 237,800 new tradespeople are expected to enter the workforce.

Statistics Canada’s 2026 research on certified journeypersons gives the most useful nuance. It found that the majority of certified journeyperson occupations — including plumbers, carpenters, and welders — appear less exposed to AI-related job transformation than other occupations because their work involves more manual labour. But it also found that about 20.3% of employees in journeyperson occupations were predicted to be at high risk of automation-related job transformation, compared with 12.8% in other occupations, mostly because some tasks are repetitive and machine-automatable.

So the trades are not immune to technology.

But they are much more protected than most white-collar information work.

The practical message for tradespeople is simple:

Learn the tools that make you faster.

Do not ignore AI.

But your core livelihood is not under the same near-term threat as roles built around documents, data entry, content production, or routine analysis.

The full picture: information layers vs. human layers

The best way to understand AI in real estate is to divide the industry into two categories.

The first category is information work.

Search. Valuation. Mortgage underwriting. Document review. Market analysis. Listing creation. Lead routing. Tenant screening. Asset reporting. Scheduling. Energy optimization.

These layers are being rebuilt quickly.

The second category is human and physical work.

Negotiation. Trust. Local judgment. Emotional decision-making. Physical inspection. Skilled trades. On-site construction. Complex problem solving in unpredictable environments.

These layers are much harder to replace.

That does not mean they will not change.

They will.

But they will change through augmentation, not simple substitution.

A good agent with AI becomes faster.

A good investor with AI screens more deals.

A good lender with AI clears clean files quickly and spends more time on exceptions.

A good developer with AI tests more scenarios before committing capital.

A good tradesperson with AI diagnoses faster, quotes faster, schedules better, and spends more time doing the high-value work.

The weak version of AI in real estate is automation for its own sake.

The strong version is leverage.

What this means for agents, investors, and operators

For agents, the value proposition has to move away from “I have access to listings” and toward “I help you make better decisions under uncertainty.”

AI will write the listing description.

AI will summarize the comparable sales.

AI will prepare the first version of the buyer guide.

AI will remind the client about deadlines.

AI will generate the social post.

The agent’s job is to know what matters, what is wrong, what is missing, what is risky, and what the client should do next.

For investors, AI will make deal screening much faster.

But faster screening does not mean better judgment.

The investor still needs to understand financing, zoning, rentability, renovation risk, tenant profile, capex, exit liquidity, and what the market will actually pay for the asset.

AI can tell you what looks like a deal.

It cannot yet reliably tell you what becomes one.

For developers, the advantage is scenario testing.

A site can now be analyzed through multiple lenses: zoning, unit mix, massing, parking, shadow impact, rental demand, construction cost, financing sensitivity, and exit value.

The developer who can test 100 versions of a project before committing capital has an advantage over the developer still underwriting one static version in a spreadsheet.

For operators, AI is moving into the building itself.

Energy optimization, predictive maintenance, tenant communication, leasing workflows, collections, renewals, and reporting are all becoming more automated.

For trades, AI is a productivity tool.

The scarce resource is not software.

The scarce resource is skilled labour.

That scarcity makes the best tradespeople more valuable, not less.

The Real / RE/MAX deal is the opening scene, not the whole movie

The Real Brokerage / RE/MAX deal is important because it shows where the brokerage industry is headed.

Distribution wants technology.

Technology wants distribution.

Both want scale.

Both want more data.

Both want ancillary revenue.

Both want to prove they are not just exposed to transaction volume and agent count.

But the deal also raises the hard question:

Is adding AI and software to a brokerage enough to change the economics?

The answer depends on whether the technology actually reduces friction, improves productivity, and creates value for agents and consumers — or whether it just becomes another layer of tools sitting on top of the same old transaction model.

That is the test for the entire industry.

AI will not save weak business models.

It will make strong operators stronger.

It will expose slow operators faster.

And it will force everyone in real estate to ask a more precise question:

What part of my work is information processing?

What part is judgment?

What part is physical?

What part is relationship?

The information layer is being rebuilt.

The judgment layer is becoming more valuable.

The physical layer is still hard to replace.

The relationship layer still matters, but it has to be backed by better data, better tools, and better execution.

That is the intelligence shift.

Not AI replacing real estate.

AI forcing real estate to become more honest about where the real value is.

[OPTIONAL CTA INSERT]

This is the thesis behind Realist.

Realist is an AI-powered investing platform built specifically for Canadian real estate investors.

Instead of bouncing between spreadsheets, listings, zoning pages, mortgage assumptions, and random calculators, you can tell it what you are looking for — for example, a cash-flowing duplex in Ontario or a multiplex conversion opportunity in Toronto — and it helps surface and analyze deals faster.

The goal is not to replace judgment.

The goal is to give investors a better first pass: cash flow, financing assumptions, upside, multiplex potential, and the key questions to investigate before acting.

In other words, AI should not make the decision for you.

It should make you much better prepared to make the decision.

Closing thought

This is not a technology story.

It is a real estate story.

For decades, real estate was protected by opacity. Information was fragmented. Processes were slow. Documents were manual. Local knowledge was hard to access. Financing was paperwork-heavy. Construction was under-digitized. Brokerage was distribution-driven.

AI attacks all of that.

But it does not attack every layer equally.

The future of real estate belongs to the people who understand where AI creates leverage and where human judgment still matters most.

That is the opportunity.

Not to pretend the industry will stay the same.

And not to pretend software replaces everything.

The opportunity is to build, invest, broker, lend, manage, and operate with a clearer understanding of what is changing underneath the surface.

The old model was built on access.

The new model is built on intelligence.

Listen to the full episode:

So, I was quoted in an article with the heading “Will HST cut on new homes save buyers money? Early look finds 78% of prices are the same or higher” but the truth is… the majority of new homes are cheaper for buyers today than they were on March 29th, 2026 (a day before the GST/HST rebate came into place). My team analyzed this in detail at valery.ca, and we found that more builders are dropping prices than increasing, and those who haven’t dropped yet are technically cheaper to buyers. Even the properties that increased price, for the most part, did so to an extent that it was still fully-offset by the GST/HST rebate:

The Canadian Housing Market Is Getting Cheaper, Even If the Listings Don’t Show It Yet

Something strange is happening in the Canadian housing market right now. Prices are not crashing, but almost everything is getting cheaper, and most people do not seem to see it yet. The reason is simple: the number you see on a listing is no longer necessarily the real price.

That is the part that makes this market so easy to misread. Headlines say the market is stabilizing. Prices look flat. Buyers are still cautious. Sellers are still stubborn. Builders are still trying to protect comps. On the surface, it looks like nothing has really changed. But underneath the listing price, one of the biggest affordability shifts in years may already be happening.

This is especially true in the new construction market. We looked at more than 1,000 floor plans across roughly 100 projects, along with nearly 4,000 active listings across Canada, to understand how builders are responding to the expanded GST/HST rebate environment. The results were pretty clean: about 22% of units had price cuts, about 70% had no listed price change, and only about 8% had increased.

That matters because it cuts against one of the loudest narratives around the rebate. A lot of people assumed builders would simply raise prices and absorb the buyer benefit. In theory, if the government gives buyers a tax break, builders could just increase the sticker price and capture the value themselves. But that is not what the data appears to show. Price cuts are happening more than two and a half times as often as price increases. That is not just noise. That is direction.

The important point is not only that prices are being cut. It is also that the cuts appear broader and deeper than the increases. Builders are not uniformly raising prices into the rebate. Many are cutting. Many are holding. Very few are increasing. This does not mean the market is crashing. It also does not mean the market is recovering. It means the market is going through price discovery. Everyone is trying to figure out what things are actually worth.

The real story, though, is not the 22% of units that got visibly cheaper. The real story is the 70% that did not change, because many of those units may have effectively become cheaper too.

That sounds contradictory, but it comes down to the mechanics of the expanded GST/HST rebate. The policy is meant to improve affordability for new homes. Broadly, buyers can receive a full rebate under $1 million, a partial rebate up to $1.5 million, and in Ontario the maximum benefit can be roughly $130,000. Outside Ontario, the GST portion still matters, but Ontario is where the combined GST/HST impact can be especially large.

The key detail is that the sticker price may not move even when the buyer’s effective cost does. A $900,000 new condo may still show up as a $900,000 new condo. On paper, nothing changed. But if the buyer is eligible for a meaningful rebate, the actual economic cost of that home may have dropped by tens of thousands of dollars. In some Ontario examples, that can look like a near 10% improvement in effective affordability, even though the listing price looks flat.

This is why the market is so confusing right now. If you only track headline prices, you may conclude that nothing is happening. But if you track the buyer’s actual net acquisition cost after rebates and incentives, a huge share of the market may already be cheaper.

That is what I would call a stealth discount market. The discount exists, but it does not always show up where people are trained to look. Most buyers look at the listing price. Investors should be looking at the net cost after rebates, incentives, closing mechanics, and financing realities. Those are not the same number anymore.

There is a catch, though, and it matters. A rebate is valuable, but it is not always the same thing as an instant price reduction. Depending on how the transaction is structured and where the policy process stands, some buyers may still need to pay the full price at closing and receive the rebate later. That means buyers still need enough cash, financing flexibility, and confidence that the rebate will come through.

That is one of the reasons demand has not suddenly snapped back. A cheaper home does not automatically create a qualified buyer. Buyers still need liquidity. They still need income. They still need borrowing capacity. They still need confidence. After the last few years of higher rates, higher living costs, tighter financing, and weaker sentiment, affordability is not only a math problem. It is also a confidence problem.

That is the paradox of this market. Buyers asked for cheaper prices. Now parts of the market are getting cheaper, but many buyers are still hesitant. That tells you the issue is not only price. It is sentiment, liquidity, and trust in the market.

Builders are dealing with their own version of the same problem. Right now, many of them seem to be stuck in a game theory problem. Imagine two builders with similar projects in the same area, competing for the same buyers. If Builder A cuts prices by 10%, they may sell faster, but they also risk resetting the entire market lower. Appraisals may come in lower. Buyers in nearby projects may start demanding discounts. Existing purchasers may get upset. Other builders may be forced to follow.

Builder B then faces the same choice. If they hold prices, Builder A may absorb the demand. If they cut prices too, the whole market may reprice lower. So both builders hesitate. Nobody wants to be the first one to officially slash prices and reset the comp set.

Instead, many builders hold headline pricing, offer incentives, negotiate quietly, or let the rebate do some of the work. That is why so much pricing appears unchanged even though affordability is improving. The market is in a temporary truce. Builders are trying to protect comps. Buyers are waiting for better deals. Inventory is building. Financing pressure is rising. Everyone is waiting to see who blinks first.

The problem is that this kind of truce is unstable. Builders can hold prices for a while, but they cannot hold forever if inventory keeps building and sales stay slow. Carrying costs are real. Debt is real. Construction financing is real. Project timelines are real. At some point, unsold inventory becomes a problem that needs to be solved.

That does not necessarily mean a crash. It does not mean every project suddenly cuts prices overnight. But it does mean the current market structure is under pressure. If sales remain weak, more builders will have to choose between protecting price and generating absorption. In a hot market, builders can protect price. In a slow market, absorption starts to matter more.

For investors, this is where the opportunity starts to show up. The mistake right now is looking only at sticker prices. That is the old way of reading this market. In this environment, you need to look at the listed price, the builder incentive package, the buyer’s rebate eligibility, the closing mechanics, and the net cost after everything is accounted for. That final number is the only number that really matters.

A project that looks expensive at first glance may be much more competitive after rebates and incentives. A project that looks unchanged may actually be meaningfully cheaper. A project with a small price increase may still be effectively discounted if the rebate more than offsets the increase. This is a market that rewards people who do the math.

The opportunity is not obvious because it is hidden in the gap between headline pricing and real pricing. That gap is where investors should be looking. Not every deal is good. Not every market is attractive. Not every builder incentive is meaningful. But the market is clearly becoming more negotiable, and the people who understand the difference between the sticker price and the real price are going to see that before everyone else does.

The Canadian new construction market is getting cheaper. Not everywhere. Not equally. Not always visibly. But meaningfully. Price cuts are happening more often than price increases. Rebate-driven affordability improvements mean many unchanged listings may still be effectively cheaper. Builders are caught between protecting comps and moving inventory. Buyers are still cautious because liquidity and confidence remain tight.

This is not a clean recovery. It is not a crash. It is a repricing process.

And in a repricing process, the listed price is only the starting point. The real deal is what happens after the math.

Watch the video clip:

The CREA March 2026 release looked like a quiet month on the surface — sales down 0.1%, listings down 0.2%, prices drifting lower. But the headline masks what is actually happening.

A mid-March bond yield spike drove fixed mortgage rates up 30 basis points, threatening to freeze out first-time buyers during the most important sales window of the year. CREA and TD both revised their 2026 forecasts downward. The Bank of Canada is holding at 2.25%, but bond markets are pricing in uncertainty that lenders are already acting on.

The Real Story Is Regional Divergence

The concept of a "balanced market" is increasingly meaningless as a national average. What matters now is where you are looking:

• Alberta — 3.2 months of inventory, prices rising, still the only province where momentum is holding

• BC — 7.8 months of inventory, prices falling nearly 6% year-over-year

• Ontario — caught between rising rates and falling prices, the most uncertain picture heading into spring

What 30 Basis Points Means for Buyers Right Now

When fixed rates moved up 30 basis points mid-March, it was not a theoretical shift — it was a real affordability hit at the worst possible time. For a $600,000 mortgage, that is roughly $100/month more in payments. For first-time buyers already stretching to the limit of qualification, it is often the difference between buying and waiting.

The CUSMA Factor Nobody Is Talking About

July 2026 brings a CUSMA review. While that is a trade agreement, the uncertainty alone tends to pause investment decisions. Combined with slower GDP and the Bank of Canada sitting on its hands at 2.25%, the second half of the year shapes up as a "wait and see" market.

What Investors Should Do Now

• In Alberta — the window remains open. Calgary and Edmonton still offer the strongest fundamentals in the country

• In BC — falling prices mean bargains are emerging, but 7.8 months of inventory means there is no rush

• In Ontario — patience. The spring season is getting disrupted by rates, and the CUSMA review adds another layer of uncertainty

• $56 billion in capital is looking for a home — the question is where it lands when the dust settles

Listen to the full episode below for the complete breakdown of the March data, what TD's revised forecast means, and where the real opportunities are heading into spring.

The silver tsunami — a flood of boomer homes hitting the market, prices correcting, and millennials finally getting their shot — has been the most anticipated event in Canadian housing for a decade.

It hasn't happened. And the data increasingly suggests it's not going to happen the way anyone expects.

In our latest episode, Nick and Dan break down why Canada's aging population isn't a housing supply event at all. It's a slow-motion structural reshaping of the economy, labour force, and wealth distribution.

The Real Numbers Behind the Myth

9.2 million boomers. They own 41% of all Canadian homes. That's roughly 6.5 million properties, most held mortgage-free.

The assumption has always been straightforward: boomers retire, downsize, sell, and flood inventory. But the data doesn't support it.

Meaningful downsizing doesn't start at 65. It starts at 75. And even then, many older Canadians don't sell — they pass homes to family members, keeping inventory locked up.

The result isn't a price crash. It's a Great Space Transfer — properties passing within families or staying off the market entirely, while the generation that needs them most faces the same barriers.

$1 Trillion Wealth Transfer — And Where It's Actually Going

The largest intergenerational wealth transfer in Canadian history is underway. The scale is staggering:

• 41% of Canadian homes owned by boomers, many mortgage-free

• Sales in the senior housing segment lagging behind a $2 trillion in boomer assets with no succession plan

• Senior housing REITs up 62% in 2025 — the best-performing category — as demand accelerates

• A 450,000-unit supply gap in senior housing by 2040

But here's the catch: this wealth transfer is widening inequality rather than closing it. Inherited real estate in Vancouver creates very different outcomes than inherited real estate in Winnipeg.

The Trades Labour Cliff Nobody's Pricing In

Another overlooked dimension: 700,000 skilled trades workers are retiring by 2029. This isn't just an employment story — it's a construction and renovation budget story.

For investors planning flips, additions, or multiplex conversions, the cost and availability of trades labour is about to get much worse. This compounds an already tight market where many projects don't pencil at current build costs.

What Investors Should Watch

The silver tsunami narrative is a distraction. The real dynamics are:

• Seniors housing — the fastest-growing real estate segment, massive supply deficit

• Cottage succession — many families unprepared for tax implications on recreational properties

• Multiplex conversions of inherited single-family properties as a generational wealth multiplier

• Regional divergence — where you inherit matters far more than what you inherit

Listen to the full episode below for a data-driven breakdown of what's actually happening — and what it means for Canadian real estate over the next two decades.

What Kind Of Spring Market Will We Have? | Listen to the full episode:

🏠 The Headline: Flat Sales, Falling Prices

CREA’s March 2026 release shows national home sales basically frozen — down 0.1% month-over-month and 2.3% year-over-year. New listings dipped 0.2% MoM. The MLS Home Price Index slipped another 0.4% on the month, putting the benchmark down 4.7% year-over-year. The national average sale price came in at $673,000, down 0.8% YoY.

That’s the third consecutive month of price declines on the HPI, and the YoY drop is now the steepest of this cycle. Activity has flatlined at low levels — buyers haven’t returned, and sellers haven’t capitulated.

📉 The Bigger Story: A Bond-Driven Rate Shock

The Bank of Canada held the overnight rate at 2.25% in March. That’s the part most headlines focused on. But fixed mortgage rates don’t take their cue from the BoC — they take it from five-year Government of Canada bond yields. And those yields ripped higher in the second half of March, climbing more than 60 basis points on the month, including a single-day move of 22 bps.

That kind of move passes through to fixed mortgage offers within days. Lenders that were quoting in the high-3s in early March were quoting in the mid-4s by month-end. For a $600,000 mortgage, every 50 bps adds roughly $170/month in payments — and that lands right when buyers were starting to think about a spring offer.

🗺️ Regional Divergence Widens

The “national average” is now hiding more than it shows. Markets where inventory is tight and prices already corrected (parts of the Prairies, Atlantic Canada, Quebec) are still posting positive YoY price changes. Markets carrying excess condo supply (Toronto, Vancouver, parts of the GTA) are leading the price declines. The gap between best and worst regional HPI prints is the widest it’s been in this cycle.

😟 Sentiment Is Worse Than the Math

Here’s the part that matters for spring: the math has actually improved compared to 2024 highs. Rates are lower, prices are lower, qualifying income requirements are lower. But the sentiment hasn’t followed. Buyer confidence surveys are still tracking near recession lows, and the bond yield spike just gave that sentiment another reason to wait. Affordability on paper is better; affordability in people’s heads is not.

🌦️ Spring Outlook: Stall, Not Slide (Yet)

If the bond move sticks, expect spring 2026 to print as the weakest spring in over a decade — but not necessarily as a crash. The setup is more “extended freeze” than “forced selling”: carrying costs are manageable for most existing owners at 2.25% policy rates, and supply isn’t building uncontrollably outside of a few condo segments. Watch two things over the next 60 days: whether five-year yields settle back below 3% (which would re-open the spring window) and whether new listings start to climb as sellers test the market.

Construction Collapse | EP. 392 | Listen to the full episode:

The two latest CMHC reports — the Housing Supply Report and the Housing Market Outlook — tell a story the headlines have mostly missed. Canada’s biggest housing risk right now isn’t a crash. It’s a freeze. New builds aren’t starting, existing projects are being shelved, and policy is arriving too late to rescue the pipeline that’s already collapsing. Here’s what stood out.

🏗️ Projects Don’t Pencil, So Builders Walk

The core finding from the Housing Supply Report is brutal: across most of Canada, new projects don’t pencil at today’s costs, interest rates, and buyer affordability. That means shovels don’t go in the ground, lenders tighten, and developer confidence shrinks. The lag between a frozen pipeline and a visible supply problem is measured in years — and we’re already deep in it.

📉 Market Activity Near Record Lows

Sales and new construction starts are tracking near multi-year lows. This isn’t a soft patch. When transactions dry up alongside starts, you get a double hit: no new supply coming online, and no velocity in the existing market. Daniel and Nick flag this as a “market activity cliff” — the kind of reading that normally precedes a construction recession.

🗺️ Wrong Homes, Wrong Places

CMHC highlights a mismatch that keeps getting worse: what’s getting built (small investor condos) isn’t what the market actually needs (family-friendly housing). Even the units that do make it through the pipeline don’t solve the affordability or livability problem — they just add inventory to segments that already have too much of it.

🏛️ Policy Arrives Late

The government has pulled several levers — expanded GST/HST rebates, development charge reductions, incentives for purpose-built rentals, and financing tweaks. Useful, but the lag is already baked in. You can’t incentivize your way out of a pipeline that was abandoned 18 months ago. The effects of these policies won’t show up meaningfully until well after the current downturn has run its course.

🧮 The Investor Playbook Now

Daniel and Nick’s practical takeaway: underwrite cautiously, prioritize rentability and cash flow over appreciation bets, and expect a thin, volatile market for a while. For buyers, that means patience pays — but the absence of new supply also means that whenever demand returns, prices could snap back fast. The worst-case scenario for Canada’s housing market isn’t a crash. It’s a stall long enough that the next shortage is already being built — in slow motion.

It’s been one of the dominant narratives in finance over the past few years: trillions of dollars moving from baby boomers to younger generations as the largest, wealthiest cohort in history ages and passes on their assets.

Listen to the full episode:

Globally, the numbers are staggering. Estimates suggest $124 trillion will change hands over the next 25 years, with millennials receiving the largest share.

But there’s a critical nuance that gets lost in most of that coverage.

In Canada, this isn’t really a wealth transfer.
It’s a space transfer.

The Global Story: Financial Wealth Changing Hands

In countries like the U.S. and U.K., wealth is broadly diversified.

Think:

• equities

• bonds

• private businesses

• alternative investments

• real estate (as one slice of the pie)

For wealthy households, real estate is just one asset among many. A typical portfolio might look something like:

• ~55% equities

• ~20% bonds

• the rest in alternatives and real estate

So when wealth transfers, it reshapes:

• stock markets

• capital allocation

• risk appetite

That’s why the narrative is framed around financial markets.

The Canadian Reality: Wealth Is Housing

Canada is different. Dramatically different.

By the end of 2024:

• Canadian residential real estate was worth $8.4 trillion

• That’s roughly 4x the country’s GDP

• And about 40–43% of total household assets

Even more telling:

For the average household, about 70% of assets are tied up in housing and vehicles, not financial markets.

This is the key insight:

In Canada, wealth = housing.

So when wealth transfers…
what’s actually moving is physical property.

Who Holds the “Space”?

The distribution makes this even more important.

• Baby boomers (~25% of the population) own 41% of all homes

• ~75% of boomers own their home

• ~64% are mortgage-free

And these aren’t static assets.

These are:

• homes that have appreciated for decades

• often tax-free (primary residence exemption)

• concentrated in major urban markets

You effectively have:

A massive generation sitting on fully paid-off, highly appreciated real estate.

And now, the demographic clock is ticking.

The Scale of What’s Coming

This isn’t theoretical.

Between 2023 and 2026 alone, roughly:

• $1 trillion is expected to transfer from boomers to younger generations

• About 36% of that is directly in real estate

That’s just the beginning.

Over the next 15–20 years, a huge portion of Canada’s housing stock will:

• be inherited

• be sold

• or be redistributed within families

Why This Changes Everything

When you inherit financial assets, you gain capital.

When you inherit real estate, you gain something much more powerful:

access.

Access to:

• a market

• a city

• a neighbourhood

• a lifestyle

• a wealth-building engine

And in Canada, that access is increasingly everything.

The Reinforcing Loop

The data already shows this playing out.

• Young Canadians whose parents own homes are 2x more likely to own themselves

• Homeownership rates among young people are falling

• The gap between owners and non-owners is widening

Which leads to a simple, uncomfortable truth:

Homeownership in Canada is becoming hereditary.

Not entirely. But directionally.

If your parents bought:

• in Toronto in the 90s

• in Vancouver pre-2010

• anywhere before the explosion in prices

Your financial trajectory is fundamentally different.

This Isn’t Just About Inequality

This is about structure.

Because when wealth is tied to space:

• it can’t be easily divided

• it’s geographically fixed

• and it directly affects where people can live

That creates second-order effects:

• labour mobility declines

• urban inequality rises

• political pressure builds

And importantly:

It makes housing policy the central economic issue of the next generation.

The Bottom Line

The global conversation is about trillions moving between portfolios.

The Canadian reality is simpler—and more consequential:

We’re not passing down wealth.
We’re passing down housing.

And in a country where housing is wealth…

That might be the same thing.

But it doesn’t feel the same depending on whether you’re inside or outside of it.

The Big Picture: $56 Billion Looking for a Home

Canadian commercial real estate investment could hit $56 billion in 2026, according to CBRE's outlook — a massive rebound after volumes were cut in half during the slowdown. That's not just a recovery; it's a signal that capital is ready to move again.

But where it goes matters more than how much. Here's what the data actually says for investors.

Listen to Episode 391: Where To Put Your Money In 2026

Daniel and Nick break down the entire CBRE 42-page outlook — every sector, every major market, and what it means for your portfolio.

Office: The Surprise Story

This is the one nobody expected. Net absorption is running at double the 20-year average. No new supply expected until 2030. Investment volumes are rebounding.

The narrative has been "office is dead" — but CBRE's numbers tell a different story. Vacancies are high, yes, but the buildings that matter (Class A, transit-connected, amenity-rich) are tightening. The flight to quality is creating a two-tier market where the good stuff holds value and everything else gets punished.

Multifamily: Transition Year

Rising vacancy rates are the headline, but the nuance matters more. Purpose-built rental starts are stalling just as demand is shifting. The CMHC data backs this up — construction starts collapsing while the units we need aren't getting built.

Seniors housing is CBRE's contrarian pick — rising demand, constrained supply, and an aging demographic that's only accelerating. If you're looking for a sector where fundamentals align, this is one to watch.

Industrial: Finding the Floor

After the pandemic boom, industrial is normalizing. Vacancy is up from record lows but still historically tight. Rents are flattening, not falling. The sector isn't breaking — it's just finding its new equilibrium after two years of unsustainable growth.

Retail: Quietly Resilient

Everyone wrote retail off years ago. But CBRE shows it continuing to deliver steady performance. Grocery-anchored and necessity retail are the backbone, and urban format continues to absorb space. The "retail is dead" narrative was premature — again.

City Spotlights

Toronto: Still the capital of Canadian CRE. Office absorption surprising to the upside, multifamily supply pipeline the deepest in the country, industrial holding steady.

Vancouver: The affordability crunch is pushing demand east. Industrial land is scarce. Multifamily vacancy creeping up but still tight by national standards.

Calgary: The turnaround story. Office vacancy dropping, population growth fueling demand, industrial still has legs.

Sleeper picks: Halifax (military and immigration demand), Ottawa (stability play), Saskatoon (resource cycle upside).

What This Means for Investors

The $56B question isn't whether capital returns to Canadian CRE — it's already happening. The question is where it lands.

• Office contrarians have a window, but only in the right assets

• Multifamily investors need to underwrite for higher vacancy and longer lease-up

• Industrial has repriced — opportunity is in niche logistics, not big-box

• Seniors housing is the quiet play nobody's talking about

• Retail remains a cash flow business — don't overthink it

Listen to Episode 390: The Homes We're Not Building Will Haunt Us In The Future

Construction starts are collapsing, developers are pulling back, and the supply gap keeps compounding. Nick and Dan dig into the CMHC data with Mathieu Laberge.

Key Data Points from CBRE 2026 Outlook

• $56B in expected CRE investment volume for 2026

• Office net absorption at 2x the 20-year average

• No new office supply expected until 2030

• Multifamily vacancy rising — transition year ahead

• Seniors housing: compelling contrarian opportunity

• Industrial finding its floor after pandemic-era surge

• GDP growth slowing, BoC holding at 2.25%

• CUSMA review in July creating policy uncertainty

Listen ad-free at Realist.ca/embed

Multiplexes now make up more than half of apartments being built in Toronto:

CMHC’s report reads that “The starts data shows a shift in builder preferences toward rental and smaller projects. Financing challenges and a desire to reduce exposure to economic uncertainty encouraged developers to shift toward smaller projects. Small projects required lower financial commitment and were quicker to deliver, reducing vulnerabilities to changes in the economy. In 2025, developments with 3 to 5 units outnumbered those with more than 100 units for the first time on record.

Purpose-built rental starts were the second highest since 1990 and exceeded condominium apartment starts in the City of Toronto for the first time. Incentives for missing middle housing, combined with relatively favourable financing and long‑term rental demand, supported purpose-built rental construction.”

Listen to the full episode on Spotify:

Today’s episode + interview with CMHC’s Mathieu Laberge:

Canada’s housing crisis isn’t over, it just changed shape. Nick and Dan break down two major CMHC reports and find a market that isn’t crashing, but isn’t moving either. Construction is stalling, developers are pulling back, and the projects that should be getting built in 2026 simply aren’t penciling. The result: a supply gap that keeps compounding in the background while everyone debates prices. They cover what the data actually says, why activity collapse is more dangerous than price collapse, and what buyers, sellers, and investors should be doing in a market defined by paralysis, not momentum. Plus, a conversation with CMHC’s Mathieu Laberge on what the data really shows and what they’re worried about next.

Toronto is lagging behind on construction:

Watch part of this episode on youtube:

On the macro side, February's housing data shows the market is starting 2026 worse than 2025. On the regulatory side, RECO is cracking down on alleged trust fund misuse at Save Max.

Here's what you need to know.

Episode 1: Canada's Housing Market Just Hit a Breaking Point (12:39)

February 2026 sales activity was 16.2% below a year earlier — and over 8% lower than February 2025. That puts us at levels comparable to 2009 or the 1990s.

Key takeaways:

• 2025 national home sales totaled 470,000 (nearly 2% below 2024)

• Affordability is improving from falling prices, lower rates, and rising wages

• Confidence is pressured by trade-war and war-related uncertainty

• Oil-driven inflation risks, weakening labor market (84,000 jobs lost in February; unemployment 6.7%)

• Rising mortgage arrears and delinquency risk (notably Toronto and Vancouver)

• New listings fell 4%, leaving a 47.6% sales-to-new-listings ratio

• Ontario and B.C. remain weak while Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Atlantic Canada show firmer price growth

Episode 2: RECO Freezes Save Max Accounts Over Trust Fund Allegations (6:18)

RECO recently froze the accounts of several Save Max real estate brokerages due to an alleged $2.7 million unlawful disbursement of trust funds.

Key takeaways:

• RECO froze Save Max accounts for alleged $2.7M trust fund misuse

• Concerns about industry practices and broker accountability

• Trust fund management issues becoming more visible as market pressures mount

• This follows a pattern of regulatory scrutiny as the market slows

What Investors Should Do Now

1. Watch regional divergence: While Ontario and B.C. are weak, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Atlantic Canada are showing firmer price growth. Consider geographic diversification.

2. Monitor delinquency trends: Rising mortgage arrears in Toronto and Vancouver could signal distressed selling opportunities later this year.

3. Scrutinize broker practices: The RECO action is a reminder to vet your brokerage relationships carefully, especially in a slower market where financial pressures can lead to questionable practices.

4. Stay liquid: With 84,000 jobs lost in February and unemployment at 6.7%, maintain cash reserves for both personal stability and potential buying opportunities.

Listen to the Full Episodes

• YouTube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JYlFtREJxw&list=PLtSIoTsU-LP3B9KqvZMEd4btQW6XRMMnd

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-canadian-real-estate-investor/id1634197127

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6wcDGtXn8Pa7K02l2Ujd3g

The Canadian Real Estate Investor drops new episodes every Tuesday and Friday at 5am EST. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

The Math Has Improved But The Sentiment Hasn’t | EP. 391 | Listen to the full episode:

Here’s what Daniel Foch and Nick Hill cover in this week’s clip — and why every number tells a story of a market that’s technically getting more affordable but emotionally getting harder to enter.

🏠 Sales Are at Historic Lows

February 2026 saw national home sales drop 16.2% year-over-year, and over 8% below February 2025. These are 2009-level numbers — comparable to the depths of the global financial crisis and the early 1990s downturn. The 10-year moving average has flatlined, and we’re now below it.

📉 The Chart Says It All

Monthly home sales peaked at nearly 65,000 units in early 2021. Today, we’re hovering near 36,000–38,000 — a level that should be triggering alarm bells across the industry. And yet, new listings also fell 4%, leaving a 47.6% sales-to-new-listings ratio — a buyer’s market, but one with fewer buyers participating.

😟 Sentiment Is the Real Problem

Affordability has genuinely improved: prices are down, rates have dropped, and wages have risen. So why aren’t buyers moving? The answer is confidence. Tariff threats, trade-war anxiety, oil-driven inflation fears, and a labor market that shed 84,000 jobs in February (pushing unemployment to 6.7%) have eroded the willingness to commit. Mortgage arrears are rising — particularly in Toronto and Vancouver.

🗺️ Regional Divergence Is Stark

Not all markets are struggling equally. Ontario and B.C. are dragging the national numbers down significantly. Meanwhile, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Atlantic Canada are showing relative resilience — firmer prices and more stable activity. The “Canada” number masks two very different realities.

🌦️ The Weather Excuse Doesn’t Hold

Every February, bears are blamed on bad weather. Daniel and Nick debunk this cleanly: month-over-month sales actually dipped — a statistical rarity that can’t be explained by snowfall. This is a confidence-driven slowdown, full stop.

RBC Economics just dropped a report that should be getting more attention: **housing starts hit a 10-year low.** Werenich & Foch break down what this means for home prices, supply pipelines, and why 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for Canadian real estate.

Listen on your preferred platform:

The Quiet Risk Beneath Canada’s Housing System

I just recorded what might be the most enlightening conversation I’ve had on the podcast.

Not because it was controversial. Not because it was emotional. But because it forced a level of clarity on something most Canadians are talking about without fully understanding.

Property rights.

More specifically: what happens when they’re no longer as secure as we assume.

Listen to the full episode:

The Misunderstood Reality of Aboriginal Title

For the past few months, there’s been a growing conversation around Aboriginal title in British Columbia. Court decisions, agreements with First Nations, and a lot of noise online about whether this poses a real risk to private property.

So I went straight to one of the most credible voices in the country on this: Tom Isaac.

He’s not a commentator. He’s been at the center of this world for decades. Chief treaty negotiator for BC. Helped establish Nunavut. Has represented both governments and Indigenous groups.

And what he laid out was simple, but uncomfortable:

When Aboriginal title is established over land, the Supreme Court of Canada has said that land is no longer Crown land. The Crown retains no beneficial interest.

That’s not an opinion. That’s the court’s own language.

Why This Matters More Than People Think

Most Canadians hear that and assume it’s symbolic. Political. Limited in scope.

It’s not.

If the Crown no longer has beneficial interest, that raises a fundamental question:

What sits underneath your property title?

Because in Canada, your ownership ultimately rests on a system built on Crown title and something called indefeasible title. That’s the legal backbone that allows you to:

• Own property with certainty

• Get a mortgage

• Transfer ownership

• Use real estate as a financial asset

If that foundation is questioned, everything above it becomes less certain.

The Cowichan Case: From Theory to Reality

This isn’t theoretical anymore.

In the Cowichan Valley, roughly 800 acres of land are now effectively frozen. Properties can’t transact. Lenders won’t finance them.

But the more important part isn’t the 800 acres.

It’s the legal reasoning behind the decision.

The court suggested that where Aboriginal title is established, provincial land title systems may not apply in the same way. Which raises a much bigger issue:

If indefeasible title doesn’t hold in those cases, then the system that underpins trillions of dollars in real estate starts to look less… absolute.

The Government Messaging Problem

At the same time, governments are saying:

“Don’t worry. Private property isn’t affected.”

But when you actually look at the agreements—like the Musqueam agreement—the maps include large areas of fully developed urban land.

There’s no explicit exclusion of private property.

So we have a disconnect:

• Public messaging: everything is fine

• Legal documents: less clear

• Court decisions: introducing uncertainty

And markets don’t handle uncertainty well.

This Isn’t Just a BC Problem

It’s tempting to think this is isolated to British Columbia.

It’s not.

The legal foundation for all of this is Section 35 of the Constitution. That applies across Canada.

If these issues escalate to the Supreme Court of Canada, any precedent could apply nationally.

That doesn’t mean the same outcomes everywhere. Ontario has a very different treaty history.

But the legal logic—once established—doesn’t stop at provincial borders.

And when you’re dealing with a country where housing is the primary store of wealth, even a small shift in perceived title security can have outsized effects.

The Bigger Economic Layer

There’s another layer to this that doesn’t get enough attention.

Governments are increasingly entering into revenue-sharing agreements tied to land and resources.

Conceptually, that makes sense. It’s part of reconciliation.

But economically, it raises a basic question:

If governments give up a portion of their revenue, how do they replace it?

If you don’t grow the economic pie, you’re just redistributing a fixed amount.

Which means:

• Less funding for services

• More pressure on infrastructure

• Longer wait times, higher costs, weaker outcomes

This isn’t theoretical either. It’s already showing up in parts of BC.

This Is Not Anti-Reconciliation

It’s important to be clear about this.

Nothing here is an argument against reconciliation. In fact, the opposite.

A strong economy is what enables meaningful reconciliation.

You can’t share prosperity if you’re not creating it.

And right now, the risk isn’t that Canada is doing too much. It’s that we’re doing it without a coherent economic plan alongside it.

The Real Issue: Uncertainty

Markets, housing, and economic systems don’t collapse because of one decision.

They weaken because of uncertainty at the margins.

And right now, we’re introducing uncertainty into the most foundational layer of the system:

Property rights.

Not removing them outright.

But making people question how absolute they really are.

Why This Matters to You

Whether you:

• Own a home

• Rent

• Invest in real estate

• Or just work in the Canadian economy

This affects you.

Because real estate isn’t just housing. It’s collateral. It’s capital formation. It’s the base layer of how our financial system works.

And if that layer becomes unstable—even slightly—it ripples outward.

Final Thought

One line from the conversation stuck with me:

The system doesn’t break all at once. It erodes at the edges until one day you realize it’s not as solid as you thought.

Canada isn’t there.

But we’re closer to asking those questions than most people realize.