The Re/Max Housing Market Drivers Report released this week examines nine major Canadian urban centres over 30 years, with triple-digit price appreciation reported from 1994 to 2024. The report found population growth, along with policy levers and market events, have long been pillars of the Canadian housing market, creating periods of extended growth and contractions in the country’s largest cities. 

Halifax Regional Municipality reported the greatest increase in price percentage growth, rising 460 per cent for a compounded annual growth rate of 5.91 per cent. The Greater Toronto Area was a close second, with a percentage increase of 436.2 per cent and a CAGR of 5.76 per cent, while Saskatoon rounded out the top three, with a percentage increase of 377 per cent and a compounded annual rate of return of 5.35 per cent.

Re/Max Canada president Don Kottick said each generation has faced its challenges and obstacles. 

“Today’s trade barriers, high interest rates and stringent lending policies may be overwhelming, but this too shall pass,” he said. “Historically, dynamics evolve from recovery to expansion, peak to contraction, trough to recovery. Cyclically, the trough is short and gives way to renewed growth. In retrospect, buyers may look back and realize that this period represented the best opportunity in recent years to get into the market at a reduced price point.”

Market conditions are softening, but new buyers still struggle

Re/Max brokers are reporting balanced/moderating conditions in most markets, with affordability being an ongoing issue, despite more favourable conditions, including rising inventory levels. 

Average price escalation continues to outpace wage growth, making it exceedingly difficult for first-time buyers across all regions to enter the market, according to the report. Additionally, many would-be purchasers are challenged by the mortgage stress test, debt burdens, downpayment requirements and high carrying costs. 

A chronic supply shortage at lower price points is driving values higher for entry-level homes, while the cancellation of new construction projects has set the stage for tight market conditions in the future, according to Re/Max. 

The report also points to a notable trend: empty-nesters and retirees now competing with first-time buyers for smaller homes, particularly bungalows, in many areas of the country, making it even tougher to break into the market.

Unlocking opportunities to ease the path to ownership

Re/Max included a list of 10 potential solutions to put homeownership back in reach for more Canadians. They are:

• Allow potential homebuyers to withdraw more than the allotted amount in the first-time Home Buyers’ Plan from their RRSPs and from their TFSAs.
• Remove the additional two per cent requirement to qualify on the mortgage stress test.
• Extend amortization periods for first-time homebuyers.
• Remove Land Transfer Taxes on purchases under certain price points (to be determined by average price in each market).
• Remove GST and HST for all homebuyers on new housing product.
• Reduce or remove red tape, outdated zoning bylaws and restructure land-use policies, while speeding up the permit and approvals process.
• Incentivize the building of homes that meet the needs of today’s homebuyers, shifting focus to end users over investors.
• Policies and programs should prioritize first-time purchasers.
• Invest in and support innovations such as modular or prefab construction techniques that bring supply online faster and at a lower cost.
• Address supply of affordable homes as a percentage of available product or new construction.

“Affordability, population growth and supply shortages are the recurring themes shaping residential housing in Canada,” said Kottick. “While each market exhibits local nuances – Vancouver’s looming condo shortage, Edmonton’s affordability and Halifax’s steep climb in values are just a few examples – the shared pressures unite all major regions. Governments and private-sector players share a great responsibility in shaping Canada’s real estate landscape, addressing the housing crisis and ensuring sustainable urban development.”

Courtney Zwicker

Courtney Zwicker is a digital reporter and associate editor for REM. Based in Atlantic Canada, she has over a decade of experience covering daily business news.

The post Today’s homebuyers face uphill battle, but ‘this too shall pass,’ says Kottick appeared first on REM.

That downturn lasted longer than anyone hoped. From 2015 to 2021, Edmonton was a buyer’s market as prices slid thousands of dollars, inventory stacked up, and apartment-style condos got the shortest end of the stick. The market was rough, and there were 40 per cent fewer transactions for any agent; many left the industry or picked up day jobs. I felt the pressure and now I know how pressure makes diamonds.

In the first six months of 2015, I sold 10 houses a month (60 transactions in six months) because I was forced to learn that markets don’t create or remove opportunities; they just shift where the opportunities live. Here are the lessons that stuck with me.

Decode your market

It’s not just a buyer’s market; the impact varies by price point, and it hits people who bought last year differently than those who bought five years ago. Using tools like a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis, we saw that owners who bought five years earlier were in a stronger equity position than those who bought the year before. We also saw that condo and townhouse owners were more affected, as they tended to be less established, and luxury was more affected due to fewer qualified move-up buyers at higher ranges. By understanding the spectrum of impact, we could see who was positioned to win.

Visualize the wins

When the market is hot, wins are plentiful and visible — more like checkers. In a down market, the wins take multiple moves — more like chess. Buyers have the advantage in a buyer’s market, and when someone is selling and buying, the buy can outweigh the sell. Every upgrader was likely to save more on the higher-priced purchase than they would lose on the lower-priced sale. At the top end, thinner buyer pools can widen that spread, which is why calm, evidence-based guidance is a differentiator.

It turns out the challenge wasn’t math; it was fear. People were scared of what they’d heard about the market and what friends would think if they sold in a downturn. What they needed most was a knowledgeable guide to help them see that the down market offered opportunities for those with equity.

Selling in a market that doesn’t want to buy

To unlock the win on the purchase, we had to sell the first property. That meant understanding the market appetite and guiding sellers to solve the market for the highest price. Again, it started with analysis.

If the market had one buyer for every three sellers, you couldn’t be second or third — let alone fifth — in a field crowded with inventory. Most competing listings started five per cent over market, then reduced slowly over a two-month period. Any property that sat more than 60 days without a price change was irrelevant to buyers.

Our clients made better decisions out of the gate, set better prices and had better outcomes. Buyers responded more readily to a listing priced to sell on opening weekend, rather than one that inched down over weeks.

We laid out worst-case scenarios up front, set clear goals and helped people with unrealistic expectations see that this market wasn’t for them.

Spoiled for choice

Once the sale property went pending, we moved to the buy — a better position, with its own challenges. Buyers saw options everywhere, looked for big discounts and had plenty of leverage. The market looked full of deals, but they were harder to find. The risks were decision paralysis and overpaying.

Through testing, we found buyers did better with strong reference points before the first showing. We created a blueprint meeting to build a blueprint for success. It showed the true frequency of opportunities that matched what they wanted — replacing the myth that “thousands of listings” meant unlimited choice. It’s not a game of selection; it’s a game of elimination. You eliminate all but the best option.

We also played the long game. When a listing was new and overpriced, we waited through the price adjustments — and a little longer — to let the seller see the market wasn’t responding. Using time well was a key factor in successful negotiations.

It wasn’t rocket science. It was patience, pattern recognition, and a refusal to get distracted by the noise.

The bigger picture

If you can’t see the wins available in your market, it’s hard to be valuable to people in your marketplace. We can’t look at the market like an ocean with giant waves and stay on the beach. We have to adapt. If there’s wind, we sail; if there are waves, we surf — but we accept we’re getting wet either way.

Taylor Hack

Taylor Hack is an international keynote speaker, cohost of The Leads are $hit Podcast, and leader of HACK&CO at RE/MAX River City; the highest-reviewed team in the Greater Edmonton Area on RankMyAgent.com. Most of Taylor’s 20-year industry experience has been in the top 1 per cent of RE/MAX globally, whether his market has been hot or cold. Taylor is a devoted girl dad, Formula One fanatic, and he believes you miss 100 per cent of the dogs you don’t pet.

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Until we start solving the right problems, all the money, headlines, and government promises in the world won’t get us anywhere near sustainable growth.

Getting to the root cause

Let’s start by unpacking the narrative. Across every level of government, housing has become the political scapegoat of choice. But blaming the housing “shortage” is like blaming a doctor shortage for long ER wait times—it sounds intuitive, but it’s fundamentally misleading. In health care, we don’t actually lack physicians; we lack compensation structures that reward patient throughput. 

Under Ontario’s Academic Funding Plan, for example, many doctors receive a salary rather than fee-for-service billing. There’s no financial incentive to increase volume. So waitlists grow, not for lack of supply, but for lack of systemic efficiency.

Sound familiar?

In real estate, we face the same false premise. There’s no actual shortage of land, materials, or interest from developers. 

What we lack is coordinated infrastructure, aligned policy, and a functional approval process. 

Kingston: A case study for collaboration

Take Kingston, Ont. as a case in point. The city already has the land capacity to meet growth projections with medium- and high-density housing. But the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) is pushing expansion beyond the urban boundary anyway, forcing new infrastructure spending in areas that don’t need it. That’s not growth. That’s sprawl.

Even worse, when we do invest in infrastructure, we often do it in silos. Picture going to work and discovering that your entire organization has been building toward different goals, with different blueprints, timelines, and metrics. That’s how cities operate when housing policy is separated from transportation, utilities, schools, and health care planning. Everyone’s working hard, but no one’s working together.

That’s why it was so refreshing to see the City of Kingston take a different approach: aligning its updated Official Plan with the Integrated Transportation and Mobility Master Plan and utility infrastructure strategy. 

This is what real master planning should look like. For too long, “master-planned communities” have been a marketing slogan, not a reality. If you don’t believe me, go look at school bus routes. Many of our new subdivisions were built without long-term demographic logic. They fill quickly with young families and then age out, leaving brand-new schools half empty a decade later.

We should be building communities people can live in across every life stage—from first-time buyers to retirees—all in the same postal code. Instead, we’re spending more public dollars than ever, producing fewer homes, and pointing fingers at the wrong culprits.

“We need carrots, not sticks”

The truth? Government doesn’t need to get back into construction. It needs to get back into coordination. Growth can and should pay for growth. New tax revenue can fund social and affordable housing—if we allow development to happen on time, on budget, and in alignment with local infrastructure needs. But that only works if we stop penalizing builders with outdated fees and start incentivizing them to build efficiently.

The Housing Accelerator Fund made a great headline, but very few municipalities will see the money. Why? Because the targets tied to that funding are unrealistic. We need carrots, not sticks. Instead of dangling unreachable housing starts, why not eliminate development charges and redirect federal dollars toward infrastructure expansion? Why not reform the New Home Warranty Act to encourage emerging builders with completion-based incentives instead of regulatory gatekeeping?

The system isn’t broken. We’ve just stopped reading the rulebook—if we ever had one to begin with. Fixing this isn’t about grand reinventions. It’s about understanding how all the moving pieces fit together, and then holding people accountable for playing their part.

Let’s stop chasing housing headlines. And start solving infrastructure problems.

Joel Thompson

Joel Thompson is a real estate broker and housing advocate who believes the system isn’t broken—we’ve just never handed out the instructions. Actively engaged in municipal, provincial, and federal politics, Joel uses his platform to push for practical, inclusive solutions in housing, infrastructure, and industry reform.

The post OPINION: Canada’s housing crisis is really an infrastructure crisis appeared first on REM.