The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) just published its latest housing supply report for Canada’s 6 largest city regions (downloadable over here).

One figure that stands out is the increase in housing starts in the Calgary CMA — it was up almost 63% last year compared to 2020. This is a positive indicator for that market.

It’s also worth mentioning that Calgary’s supply is more evenly split between low-rise and apartment housing. This is in contrast to markets like Toronto, where 3/4 of all new housing is now “apartment”, and in Montreal, where the percentage is even higher.

My view is that it’s time to get more granular with our reporting of higher density housing. In the above example, we are showing 3 categories for grade-related housing and only 1 for anything outside of that.

This is our national bias toward low-rise housing coming through.