CMHC Housing Market Outlook Reports 2026

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) is the federal Crown corporation responsible for mortgage loan insurance, affordable housing, and housing research. Among their most practically useful outputs for mortgage professionals are the quarterly Housing Market Outlook (HMO) reports — comprehensive forecasts that inform every broker conversation about whether now is the right time to buy, sell, or refinance.

CMHC publishes four major Housing Market Outlook reports per year, typically in January, April, June, and October. Each HMO covers national trends and includes regional breakdowns for Canada's major urban markets: Toronto (Greater Golden Horseshoe), Vancouver (Metro Vancouver), Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Halifax, and others.

Each report includes three-year forecasts for: housing starts (new construction), resale transactions, average and median resale prices, rental vacancy rates, and average market rents. CMHC economists also provide commentary on the macroeconomic conditions driving their forecasts — employment, immigration, interest rates, and affordability trends.

For mortgage brokers, the CMHC HMO is one of the most credible data sources available when advising clients. Clients asking "is it a good time to buy?" or "will prices come down?" benefit from hearing that their broker references authoritative government research rather than newspaper headlines. The CMHC data also supports rate hold decisions: if the HMO projects continued price appreciation in a client's target market, a 120-day rate hold and committed purchase timeline may make more sense than waiting.

The HMO is supplemented by CMHC's Housing Market Assessment (HMA), which evaluates whether housing markets show signs of overheating, overvaluation, acceleration, or overbuilding. This four-factor framework is useful for brokers in markets like Toronto and Vancouver where affordability concerns are perennial.

All CMHC reports are free to download from the CMHC website. CMHC also publishes Mortgage Industry-Focused reports and the Annual State of Housing in Canada report, which provide deeper analysis of mortgage market conditions, arrears rates, and insured mortgage volumes.