Housing

House prices, affordability, rent, and household debt — Canada and OECD peers

How much it costs to rent or buy a home is a defining budget question for most Canadians. The charts below track house prices, the gap between home prices and incomes, rent, and how much debt households carry. Inflation has its own page: Cost of Living.

Where Canada stands

A scorecard of where Canada ranks among the peer group’s 17 economies on each measure (latest available year). Dots are ordered by rank, so further right is more favourable for Canada (lower-is-better measures are flipped accordingly). Canada is maroon, key comparators in colour; hover a dot for its value and rank.

Real house prices

Inflation-adjusted (“real”) house price index, set to 100 in 2015 (the OECD’s published basis). Because it removes general inflation, it shows how house prices have moved relative to the overall cost of living. Canada is shown in maroon against OECD peers.

Real house price growth since 2015: ranked

Each country’s index equals 100 in 2015, so this ranks how much real house prices have risen since 2015. This does not show which country’s housing is most expensive today: a rebased index doesn’t show price levels; it shows change from a common starting point.

House prices relative to incomes

The price-to-income ratio divides house prices by household disposable income (indexed to 2015 = 100, the OECD’s published basis). It is a standard affordability gauge: when the line rises, homes are becoming more expensive relative to what households earn.

Change in price-to-income since 2015: ranked

This series is also rebased to 2015 = 100, so it ranks the change in the price-to-income ratio since 2015, i.e., how much affordability has changed.

New housing prices in Canada

Statistics Canada’s New Housing Price Index tracks changes in builders’ selling prices of new homes (the “total” of house and land), monthly (December 2016 = 100, Statistics Canada’s standard base). This is a Canada-specific series shown over time. It covers builder-sold new houses, so it does not capture condominium apartments, whose prices can move differently.

Home prices vs. incomes

House prices and household incomes, both in real (inflation-adjusted) terms and indexed to 2000 = 100 so they share one scale across a quarter-century. Plotting the two paths together shows the affordability gap directly: the wider they spread, the more home prices have outrun what households actually earn. The price line is the OECD’s real house-price index for Canada (which reflects the resale market); the income line is Statistics Canada’s median after-tax income, also in constant dollars. (The New Housing Price Index isn’t used here since it tracks builders’ prices for new homes.)

Actual home prices by city and type

The charts above use index and proxy measures because actual transaction prices are tightly licensed. The figures in this section use the CREA MLS® Home Price Index. This is the real estate industry’s benchmark for the price of a “typical” home in each market. Unlike the census’s owner-estimated values or the New Housing Price Index, this tracks actual resale prices and breaks them out by dwelling type. This is a very useful dataset, but one with limitations on use: we have written permission to show these charts for educational purposes, but not to share the underlying data.

This first chart shows the latest benchmark price by city and dwelling type across Canada’s major markets.

House prices over time, by city and type

How the benchmark price of a typical home has moved in each major market, by dwelling type (single-family house, townhouse, or apartment/condo). Semi-detached homes are included in the single-family category; the MLS® HPI does not publish a separate national semi-detached series. This is the run-up that the index and proxy charts above can only hint at.

Condos vs. single-family houses: the widening gap

The same dwelling types, seen a different way. All three types are on one chart so the gap between a condo and a single-family house is visible. Use the selector to switch cities. The spread is widest in Vancouver and Toronto. Because their condos are comparatively cheap, it’s notable in Calgary and Edmonton too. The gap is narrowest in Halifax and Montréal.

How many years of income a home costs

Dividing the national benchmark price by median after-tax income gives an intuitive affordability gauge: how many years of a typical household’s after-tax income it would take to buy the typical home. (The benchmark is deflated to 2024 dollars via CPI so it is comparable with the inflation-adjusted income series.) The ratio has climbed from 5.7× in 2005 to 9.3× in 2024. Use the selector to switch from the typical home to a specific dwelling type. A single-family house now runs about 10.3× income, while an apartment or condo sits near 6.8×.

Home values by city

Sale prices by city aren’t openly available, but the census asks owners to estimate their home’s value, which offers a general guide. This maps median dwelling value across metropolitan areas (2021 Census). Zoom and pan to your area. Owner-estimated, 2021; city-level (CMA/CA).

For the full neighbourhood-level view — every census tract, where you can zoom right to your own street — open the dedicated map (kept on its own page so this one stays fast to load):

→ Home value by neighbourhood (census-tract map)

The same census tracts also carry median household income and median age maps. Flip between them to see how prices, incomes, and who lives where across a city.

Affordability by city (home value ÷ income)

Home value divided by median household income is roughly how many years of a typical household’s income a typical home costs. It turns the price map into an affordability map. The same $1M home is far less attainable where incomes are lower. Zoom and pan to your area. (2021 Census; owner-estimated value ÷ median household income.)

Starter-home affordability by city

The maps above use the typical home, but people’s first home is often an apartment or condo. This compares the cost of a benchmark apartment against a typical local household’s income in each major market, in years of income. Even this entry tier is quite expensive in Vancouver; a starter condo in Edmonton or Winnipeg costs a fraction of Vancouver’s. (Apartment benchmark from the CREA MLS® HPI; income is the 2021-Census metro median, aged forward to the benchmark month by national wage growth. The comparison across cities is the most reliable signal.)

Who is buying: first-time buyers vs investors

Behind the price story is a question of who is buying. The Bank of Canada tracks the share of mortgaged home purchases made by first-time buyers, repeat buyers, and investors (buyers acquiring a property they don’t intend to occupy). Since 2014 the investor share has increased, while the first-time-buyer share has slipped: a notable shift in housing demand. (Cash purchases aren’t captured, and the most recent quarters lag.)

Rent in Canada

The Consumer Price Index for rent (2002 = 100, the CPI’s standard base year). Renters are roughly a third of Canadian households, so rent is a central part of the cost-of-living picture that owner-focused house-price indices miss.

Typical rent by city

The index above shows how rents have moved; this shows the dollar levels today. It maps the average monthly rent for a purpose-built rental in each major metropolitan area, by unit size. The two-bedroom apartment (CMHC’s standard reference unit) shows first; use the selector for bachelor, one-bedroom, and three-bedroom-plus units. Rents are highest in Vancouver, Victoria, and Toronto and lowest across much of Quebec and the Prairies. Canada’s largest metros are highlighted. One caveat: the survey covers purpose-built rental buildings only. Rented condos and other secondary-market units, which often rent for more and carry much of the rental market in the biggest cities, are not counted, so these averages understate what a new tenant there typically pays.

Housing starts

The number of new homes on which construction began, monthly. Starts are the clearest gauge of new housing supply, which is the other side of the affordability story from the prices, rents, and demand above.

Rental vacancy rate

The share of purpose-built rental apartments sitting empty, across census metropolitan areas. A low vacancy rate signals a tight rental market with little slack. This creates upward pressure on rents and difficult searches for tenants.

The national average hides wide variation between cities, which are often quite different between the tightest and loosest markets. Canada’s largest metros are highlighted.

Household debt

Household debt as a percentage of net disposable income. A value of 180% means households owe $1.80 for every dollar of annual after-tax income. Most of this debt is mortgages, with consumer credit and other loans making up the rest. It captures how leveraged households are, which is relevant to both affordability and financial risk.

Latest household debt: ranked

Canadian households carry among the heaviest debt loads in the peer group: well over one and a half times their annual disposable income, and roughly double the US level.

Data current to 2025.

Household debt payments

The debt level above measures how much households owe; the debt service ratio measures how much they pay: the share of disposable income that goes to obligated debt payments (interest and principal) each quarter. It is the more direct gauge of financial stress, because it rises when interest rates climb even if the amount owed stays flat. The ratio fell sharply in 2020, when policy rate cuts and mortgage payment deferrals eased payments, then climbed back to around its historical high as households renewed mortgages at higher rates. Mortgage payments are the larger and more interest-rate-sensitive of the two components.

Wealth and mortgage debt, by age

Debt and home prices land differently across generations. Net worth is what a household owns minus what it owes. This typically climbs steeply with age. Switch the measure to see real-estate value and mortgage debt on their own. Mortgage debt peaks among households in their late thirties and forties, then falls away as loans are paid down and as older households, who bought earlier, sit on more home equity. These are modelled, experimental estimates from Statistics Canada’s Distributions of Household Economic Accounts, which apportion the national balance sheet across household groups. Read the levels as indicative of the gaps between groups rather than exact dollar figures.

Download data

Mortgage and bond-yield data are on Borrowing Costs.