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Home Blog Housing Synchronized housing bubble spreads to six red-hot Canadian markets: CCPA study

Michael Shapcott

Synchronized housing bubble spreads to six red-hot Canadian markets: CCPA study

For the first time in 30 years, a synchronized housing bubble has spread to six red-hot real estate markets in Canada, according to Canada’s Housing Bubble: An Accident Waiting to Happen, a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).  Precarious Housing in Canada, a powerful research report from the Wellesley Institute, documents the housing insecurity facing millions of low and moderate-income Canadians, and sets out the framework for a long-overdue national affordable housing strategy.The CCPA study examines trends in house prices in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal and Ottawa between 1980 and 2010 and finds price increases in those cities are outside of a historic comfort level.On average, inflation-adjusted house prices in these cities have historically held stable at between $150,000 and $220,000 in today’s dollars, but current housing prices in all six major markets are now over $300,000, on average. “The bursting of housing bubbles is a rare event in Canada, but the steep rise in house prices in so many cities displays all the hallmarks of an accident waiting to happen,” says the report’s author David Macdonald, a CCPA research associate.

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Michael Shapcott

Michael Shapcott

Michael Shapcott is Director, Affordable Housing and Social Innovation at Wellesley Institute. Michael has worked extensively in Toronto, in many parts of Canada, nationally and internationally on social innovation, the non-profit sector, civic engagement, housing and housing rights, poverty, social exclusion, urban health and health equity. He is recognized as one of Canada’s leading community-based housing and homelessness experts. He is currently on secondment to the Princes' Charities Canada.

Acknowledgement of Traditional Land

We wish to acknowledge this land on which the Wellesley Institute operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

Revised by the Ceremonial Committee at the University of Toronto Office of Indigenous Initiatives in April 2021.