Carpenters building a home in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Que., in October, 2025.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. will change its monthly housing starts report to add earlier indicators of homebuilding activity in an attempt to better reflect market sentiment.
The change is occurring as the years-long housing slump exposes holes in the government’s statistics on the state of new construction activity.
Canada has no government statistics on preconstruction sales, a harbinger of new homebuilding. The industry said it observed homebuilding decline more quickly than CMHC’s housing starts data showed in the first few years of the construction downturn.
That’s because CMHC measures housing starts at a later phase of development than industry groups, whose data painted a grimmer picture of homebuilding before the government’s statistics captured the changing trend.
CMHC, which has been measuring homebuilding since the late 1940s, is now responding to developers’ requests for an earlier indicator of change.
“There’s a need to map the full continuum of housing construction,” said CMHC chief economist Mathieu Laberge.
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The housing agency said it will add residential building permit data to its monthly housing start reports beginning with its next release in mid-May.
This will include monthly data on the total number of building permits that have not yet become housing starts. CMHC is also issuing quarterly data on the length of time it takes a building permit to become a housing start.
If the time increases between when building permits are issued and the start of construction, CMHC said that could suggest developers are facing challenges launching, such as a shortage of workers. It could also mean developers have postponed their projects, which has become common over the past few years.
An increase in the total number of outstanding permits could suggest developers are more confident about building, CMHC said. But Mr. Laberge said it could also provide a picture of negative market sentiment, as developers could be having more challenges advancing their projects.
The new CMHC building permit data will be provided for every type of housing in major cities across the country.
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CMHC is also working on a pilot that will survey condo developers to track preconstruction sales.
“That’s one gap we want to fill,” Mr. Laberge said.
Preconstruction sales are a critical indicator for condo development because developers normally have to sell a minimum of 70 per cent of their building’s units in order to get construction financing.
The CMHC study will be conducted with trade group Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD).
The survey will look at high-rise condo buildings in the Greater Toronto Area, the country’s largest real estate market where new condo sales are down more than 90 per cent from their peak in 2021 and where buyers are defaulting on their purchases.
CMHC said the survey will look at sales during each stage of a condo building’s development. That includes sales in the preconstruction phase, when the project is still on paper and before the developer gets financing; during several phases of construction; and when the developer has completed the building.
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BILD would also like the survey to include more detailed statistics on how inventory is being absorbed, such as the percentage of units being held by developers.
“It’s about getting us a more comprehensive picture,” said BILD’s chief operating officer Justin Sherwood. “What sometimes gets missed is if a developer is holding on to units and turning them into long-term rentals, or whether a developer may just be holding on to units for later,” he said.
CMHC said the survey will be rolled out “as soon as possible.”
Mr. Laberge said once the housing agency solidifies its methodology, it will start collecting new home sales data across the country.
“What we hope to get is a sound consistent methodology we can apply in other centres,” he said.
Mr. Laberge said CMHC will not adopt a proposal to begin tracking housing starts based on an earlier phase of development when excavation is underway, which the industry has argued is a more accurate reflection of what is occurring in the market. Instead, CMHC said it measures a housing start when work starts on a building, typically when 100 per cent of the concrete has been poured for the whole of the footing around the residential structure.
CMHC said starting excavating does not necessarily mean the project will be built, and its method is a better indicator of future housing supply. CMHC said at the stage when concrete has been poured, 99 per cent of starts will be completed.
Mr. Sherwood said BILD will continue to push for excavation measurements but said the industry is still happy with the addition of building permit data and the preconstruction sales survey.
“If we’re getting building permit and preconstruction sales considered in their forecasts, that’s going to improve things,” Mr. Sherwood said.