Market Analysis

When Will the Housing Crisis End in Quebec?

By Georges Matar · October 21, 2026 · 8 min read

No public agency sets a date for the end of the housing crisis in Quebec, or even an official criterion for declaring it over. What does exist are dated measures: vacancy, the gap in homes to be built, housing starts and population. Here is where Quebec, Montreal and Laval stand on each one as of October 21, 2026, and what can be concluded from them.

How a housing crisis is measured

The word “crisis” has no regulatory definition. Two measures are used most often, and they do not answer the same question.

Rental balance. The vacancy rate, which CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) measures every October in private apartments, tells you whether a tenant can find a place to live.

Affordability. CMHC measures it as a ratio between the cost of a home and household income. Its fall 2026 Housing Supply Report, released on September 10, 2026, calculates what would need to be built to return to the 2019 level by 2036. This benchmark is not set by a government. Its June 2025 report says so: “These figures are not government targets.”

The 2026 figures show exactly that: a rental market close to balance, and buying less affordable than in 2019.

The vacancy rate: where Quebec stands in 2026

The latest figure comes from the October 2025 survey, released on December 11, 2025 in the Rental Market Report, which was still the edition online as of October 21, 2026.

Montreal CMA: 2.9%, up from 2.1% a year earlier, an increase deemed statistically significant.
Island of Montreal: 3.1%, up from 2.0%.
Laval: 3.4%, up from 2.4%, a change CMHC does not consider significant.
Quebec City CMA: 2.4%. Gatineau: 3.8%.

CMHC attributes the easing in Montreal to the many new units completed and, on the demand side, “mainly” to the drop in the number of non-permanent residents.

The 3% threshold has no official author. In its mid-year rental market update, released on June 9, 2026, CMHC describes it as “the threshold long used in the housing sector,” one that “does not work for all markets or for all periods.” Instead, it estimates, city by city, the range in which inflation-adjusted rent growth is close to zero. For Montreal: 2.5% to 4.0%, on a provisional basis. At 2.9%, the CMA was already within that range in 2025.

The average hides the bottom of the market. According to Table 1.4 of the report, the vacancy rate in the Montreal CMA was 1.3% for the quarter of apartments with the lowest rents, and 4.9% for the most expensive quarter. In Laval: 0.8% and 7.7%. For a modest-income household, balance has not returned.

The projection. In its summer 2026 Housing Market Outlook, released on July 22, 2026, CMHC projects a rate of 3.8% for the CMA in 2026, 4.5% in 2027 and 4.8% in 2028. This is a projection, not a measurement.

The gap in homes to be built, according to CMHC

The fall 2026 report is CMHC’s most recent estimate of shortages. Its gap table only puts figures on six CMAs, including Montreal, and on Canada.

Area	Expected per year, status quo	Required per year to 2036	Annual gap
Montreal CMA	22,000	64,000 to 78,000	42,000 to 56,000
Canada	231,000	417,000 to 469,000	187,000 to 238,000

Source: CMHC, Housing Supply Report, fall 2026, Table 1. The status quo corresponds to the housing starts expected if current trends continue.

Montreal is falling further behind. The gap there has widened since the 2025 estimate, despite more housing starts, because “price growth reduced affordability more than supply growth was able to improve it.” The CMA’s annual pace would need to “more than triple.” Its cost-to-income ratio went from 34% in 2019 to 48%, its highest level since the 1990s.

The gap is shifting toward ownership. Rental units accounted for 86% of housing starts in the CMA in the first half of 2026, a record. New condos there cost 20 to 40% more than comparable resale units, and condo starts remain near their lows.

The rest of Quebec. The 2026 report puts no figure on it. In the last estimate that does, released on June 19, 2025, CMHC considered no housing starts beyond the status quo necessary for the region it calls the “rest of Quebec”: 23,229 per year in both scenarios.

Housing starts: the current pace

Area	2024	2025	Jan. to Sept. 2025	Jan. to Sept. 2026
Quebec, centres of 10,000 people or more	41,221	54,220	37,782	39,071
Montreal CMA	17,570	27,777	19,331	19,028

Source: CMHC, monthly housing starts data for December 2025 and September 2026, the latter released on October 16, 2026.

2025 was strong, 2026 is levelling off. Housing starts jumped 58% in the CMA in 2025, and 32% in Quebec. Over nine months in 2026, Quebec is up 3%, while Ontario is down 5%; the Montreal CMA, for its part, is down 2%. In September 2026, the CMA recorded 1,266 housing starts, compared with 2,610 a year earlier, and its six-month trend fell 8% from one month to the next.

The pace, compared with the need. In its summer 2026 baseline scenario, CMHC projects 24,600 housing starts in the CMA in 2026, then 22,000 in 2027 and 20,500 in 2028. Even 2025, the best year in the table, remains below half of the minimum of 64,000 per year.

Demographics, the other half of the equation

Quebec has cut its targets. The Plan d’immigration du Québec 2026 from the ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration (Quebec’s immigration ministry) plans for 43,000 to 47,000 permanent admissions in 2026, compared with 48,500 to 51,500 regular admissions planned for 2025. It aims for no more than 65,000 temporary foreign workers and 110,000 international students in Quebec in 2029. Its stated objective: “to reduce part of the pressure observed in recent years on access to housing.”

Fewer people, not fewer households. In its projections of July 9, 2026, the Institut de la statistique du Québec (ISQ) projects about 50,000 fewer people (-0.6%) between 2025 and 2029. Under its central assumption, non-permanent residents would go from about 562,000 on July 1, 2025 to 375,000 in 2030. Yet housing needs driven by demographics would rise by 0.7%: the decline mainly affects young people, and the number of dwellings per person increases with age, because people then more often live alone or in collective housing.

The Island of Montreal is the exception: -6.9% in population and -5.3% in housing needs by 2029, according to the ISQ.

What these projections do not count. The ISQ specifies that its needs exclude “the shortfall to be made up to achieve better affordability.” That shortfall is the CMHC gap, and a population that levels off does not close it. CMHC adds that demand should firm up over the next decade, and that “the main risk is that the supply of new housing will be insufficient when demand recovers.”

What it changes for a buyer or an owner

You rent and are thinking of buying. New buildings are competing for tenants: CMHC reports free months sometimes being offered in the Montreal area. That wider choice does not reach the lowest rents. Before you compare a rent with a mortgage payment, the rent vs. buy calculator puts the two columns side by side, and renting or buying in Greater Montreal details the items.

You are buying. According to CMHC, the missing homes are increasingly concentrated in ownership. That 20 to 40% gap between a new condo and resale can be checked project by project. The protections that come with a new build are covered in buying new construction in Quebec.

You own a plex. CMHC observes more vacancy in new and expensive units, and a 2025 rent increase driven mostly by renewed leases. The rules and the cash flow calculation are in the income plex guide. The profitability of a rental purchase is the subject of another article in this series.

When will the housing crisis end: what the data allow us to say

What can be said:

On average, rental housing in the Montreal CMA was within CMHC’s provisional balance range in 2025; the quarter with the lowest rents was not.
Affordability for buyers in Montreal has moved further away from its 2019 level.
Housing starts in 2026 remain far from the pace deemed necessary.
Population growth is slowing by political decision, which reduces the pressure without erasing the backlog.

What cannot be said: a date. CMHC’s 2036 horizon is the end point of a scenario, not a forecast. Projections move: in February 2026, CMHC revised its vacancy forecasts for Montreal upward, after a stronger easing than expected in 2025, then raised them again in July, to 4.5% instead of 4.2% for 2027. A firm date would be an opinion.

What to watch: the next Rental Market Report, drawn from the October 2026 survey. Price forecasts are the subject of another article in this series.

Frequently asked questions

When will the housing crisis end in Quebec? No official source gives a date. CMHC’s 2036 horizon is that of a construction scenario, not a deadline.

Is a 3% vacancy rate an official standard? No. CMHC sees it as a threshold commonly used in the sector and, since June 2026, has proposed provisional ranges by city: 2.5% to 4.0% for Montreal.

Is the housing crisis in Montreal over in 2026? In new and high-end buildings, rental supply has expanded. In the quarter with the lowest rents, vacancy was 1.3% in October 2025, and for buyers, the affordability gap has deepened, according to CMHC.

Will the drop in population solve the housing shortage? Not on its own: according to the ISQ, Quebec’s population would fall by 0.6% by 2029, but housing needs would rise by 0.7%. These projections do not count the accumulated backlog.

To go further, read how to read dated data on the Montreal and Laval market and the Laval real estate market by sector.

Wondering what these figures change for your plan to buy or sell? Write to me. We will look at the dated data for your area together. Service in French, English and Arabic.