Ontario Housing Supply · Updated monthly
Ontario Housing Supply Update — July 2026
July flipped the script: Ontario single-detached starts rose almost 19% year-over-year — the first gain in four releases — while multi-unit fell 35% and total starts dropped 28%. The one engine that carried the province all year just stalled.
Ontario housing starts — July 2026
Seasonally adjusted annual rate. Year-over-year comparison vs. same month prior year.
| Housing type | Prior year | Current | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single-detached | 9,612 | 11,415 | +18.8% |
| Multi-unit | 62,990 | 40,861 | −35.1% |
| Total starts | 72,602 | 52,276 | −28.0% |
What a “start” measures: CMHC counts every new dwelling begun — including a house built to replace one just demolished. Demolitions are never subtracted, so these figures are gross construction activity, not net new supply. Some share of single-detached starts — CMHC doesn’t publish how large — are teardown replacements that add nothing to the housing stock. Net growth is lower than every number on this page.
What the data shows
CMHC released its July 2026 monthly housing starts on August 20. Ontario’s total starts fell 28% from a year ago on a seasonally adjusted annual basis — the sharpest drop this year — but the mix underneath inverted. Single-detached starts rose almost 19% year-over-year, the first increase in four releases, while multi-unit construction fell 35%. Nationally the annual rate came in at 229,074 units, down 5% from June, with actual starts in larger centres down 19% year-over-year and Toronto down 10%. For a year the story was apartments propping up a province that had stopped building houses; in July the apartments stopped too.
Why conventional supply is pulling back
Read the single-detached gain for what it is before celebrating it. Ontario added roughly 1,800 single-detached starts year-over-year at annual rates — against roughly 22,000 multi-unit starts that disappeared over the same period. And the gain comes off a weak base: last July was one of 2025’s softest single-detached months, and this July’s 11,415-unit rate still sits inside the same narrow band the province has been stuck in for two years. What actually changed is that the multi-unit engine — the one thing holding Ontario’s totals up through a year of single-detached decline — stalled, as high financing costs and weak condo pre-sales finally caught up with apartment starts. The province isn’t building more of what families want; it’s building less of everything else.
Where modular fits
Factory-built homes sidestep the cost structure that has pinned site-built single-detached inside the same narrow band for two years — lower production cost, a build measured in months instead of a year-plus, and none of the weather or trade-fragmentation risk of conventional construction. CMHC counts modular homes on permanent foundations inside these very starts numbers — modular isn’t a workaround to the data, it’s inside it. When the province’s total pipeline contracts 28% in a single year, every modular home delivered is net-new supply the market isn’t otherwise producing.
See how modular homes deliver for buyers in Ontario, or read the REALTOR® field guide for the talking points to use with clients.
Small centres and the coverage gap
July is not one of the four months a year CMHC fully counts starts in centres under 10,000 population — the survey enumerates that footprint only in March, June, September, and December, and estimates between counts. But the estimate is stark: starts outside the larger centres ran 52% below last July at annual rates, deeper than even June’s fully-counted 48% decline. Every read this year — counted or estimated — has come in worse than the one before. The gap keeps widening exactly where conventional builders build least: exurban land-lease, on-reserve First Nations land, small-town and rural Ontario. Those are the places modular delivers fastest, and where the supply gap is now the widest it’s been all year.
For landowners outside major centres, our landowner partnership model puts modular communities into footprints conventional developers won't touch.
What this means for buyers and investors
For homebuyers: one month of single-detached growth is a data point, not a supply wave. The level is still where it’s been for two years, and the total pipeline behind it just shrank 28% — waiting for site-built supply still means waiting. Modular delivers within months at price points conventional builders no longer hit. For investors: the multi-unit pullback is tomorrow’s rental shortage — apartments not started in 2026 are units that never reach the market in 2028 — while small-centre and rural starts just posted their weakest read of the year. Single-unit modular ownership and small-scale rental plays sit exactly where both gaps are opening.
Run the numbers on a modular rental play with the rental income calculator.