Ontario Housing Supply · Updated monthly
Ontario Housing Supply Update — August 2026
Ontario’s housing starts fell for a fourth straight month in August — down 23% year-over-year to a 41,829-unit annual rate — as multi-unit construction dropped 31%. Single-detached rose almost 10%, but condo starts have been cut nearly in half this year.
Ontario housing starts — August 2026
Seasonally adjusted annual rate. Year-over-year comparison vs. same month prior year.
| Housing type | Prior year | Current | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single-detached | 9,874 | 10,839 | +9.8% |
| Multi-unit | 44,673 | 30,990 | −30.6% |
| Total starts | 54,547 | 41,829 | −23.3% |
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 August 2026 monthly housing starts on September 16. Ontario’s total starts fell 23% from a year ago on a seasonally adjusted annual basis, to 41,829 units — the fourth monthly decline in a row, down from almost 82,000 in April. Multi-unit construction fell 31%; single-detached rose almost 10%, a second straight year-over-year gain. Nationally the annual rate held essentially flat at 229,046 units, and actual starts in centres of 10,000 and over slipped just 2% year-over-year across Canada — against 22% in Ontario and 45% in Toronto. Quebec and the Prairies are building more; Ontario is where the pipeline is shrinking.
Why conventional supply is pulling back
The multi-unit slide has a clear shape once you split it by who the homes are for. StatCan’s intended-market table (CMHC data, centres of 50,000 and over, actual starts, published through July) shows Ontario condo starts down 42% in the first seven months of 2026 — 6,210 units against 10,690 a year earlier — while purpose-built rental rose 50%, from 12,175 to 18,277. Rental carried the province’s apartment numbers all year, and in July even rental fell 38% from last July. One caveat: intended market is declared at the start, so investor-owned condos that end up rented still count as condo. The single-detached gain is real but small — roughly 1,000 more units at annual rates, against nearly 14,000 fewer multi-unit starts.
Where modular fits
Factory-built homes take on both halves of what is pinning conventional construction: cost and time. A modular home costs less to build than a comparable site-built one, arrives on a fixed schedule measured in months rather than a year-plus, and is built in a controlled environment — dry materials, inspection at every stage, no weather delays on site. CMHC counts modular homes on permanent foundations inside these very starts numbers. And one form of modular is net-new by construction: a garden suite or backyard ADU. Starts count gross construction — a house built to replace a demolished one is still a start — but nothing is torn down to put a second home in a backyard. It’s one of the few kinds of ground-related start where every unit adds a home to Ontario’s stock.
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
August is an estimate month for centres under 10,000 population — CMHC fully counts that footprint only in March, June, September, and December. The estimate is the weakest of the year: starts outside the larger centres ran 53% below last August at annual rates, after 52% in July and a fully counted 48% in June. September’s count, due in October, is the next real test. The gap keeps widening where conventional builders build least — exurban land-lease, on-reserve First Nations land, small-town and rural Ontario — and where modular’s schedule advantage matters most.
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: two months of single-detached gains are welcome, but they sit inside a provincial pipeline that has shrunk for four straight months. Modular delivers within months, on a schedule you can plan around, at price points conventional builders no longer hit. For investors: condo pre-construction — the traditional small-investor rental play — was down 42% through July, and condos not started this year are rentals that never reach the market in 2028. A backyard suite on land you already own is a rental unit that adds to supply rather than replacing it, and it doesn’t depend on a developer’s pre-sale threshold.
Run the numbers on a modular rental play with the rental income calculator.