Rental Housing Assessment: Second Quarter 2016
Highlights
- This quarterly release of the Housing Market Assessment (HMA) provides updated results1 to evaluate the evidence of problematic housing market conditions at the national level and in 15 Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs). More detailed reports are available2 for the CMAs covered in this report.
- The HMA analytical framework considers four factors to assess the evidence of problematic housing market conditions: overheating; acceleration of house prices; overvaluation; and, overbuilding. The appendix of this report contains a detailed description of the framework.
- Overvaluation and overbuilding remain the most prevalent problematic conditions observed across the 15 centres covered by the HMA. Overvaluation is detected in nine centres while overbuilding is detected in seven. CMHC’s framework also detects evidence of other problematic conditions such as overheating and acceleration in house prices of varying degrees across CMAs.
- The evidence of overvaluation has increased since the previous assessment in Vancouver, Hamilton, and Saskatoon.
- The analytical framework still detects strong evidence of problematic conditions in four CMAs: Toronto, Calgary, Saskatoon, and Regina. In Toronto this is due to a combination of price acceleration and overvaluation, and, while we do not detect overbuilding, we have some concerns about the high inventory of completed and unsold condominium apartments. In Calgary, Saskatoon, and Regina the strong evidence of problematic conditions is due to the detection of overvaluation and overbuilding.
- Since the previous assessment, the overall level of evidence of problematic conditions detected by our framework has moved from weak to moderate for Vancouver due to the detection of strong evidence of overvaluation. The overall assessment remained the same for other centres.
- Overall, the analytical framework detects moderate evidence of problematic conditions in six CMAs: Vancouver, Montréal, Edmonton, Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Québec.
- Nationally we detect moderate evidence of overvaluation, reflective of a variety of price conditions across the country with some CMAs showing more signs of overvaluation than others.
To view the full report click here.
