Nearly 141,500 homes across Canada have a building permit in hand and no construction under way, a backlog that grew again in July even as the number of projects actually breaking ground fell 19 per cent from a year earlier.
The figure comes from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s monthly starts and construction release, published Aug. 18. CMHC counted 141,480 units with approved building permits but not yet started in July, up three per cent from June. The agency describes these as units where no construction activity has yet been observed through its Starts and Completions Survey, and treats them as an indicator of future starts.
Set against what builders actually did last month, the number reads less like a pipeline and more like a queue that has stopped moving. Actual housing starts in centres with a population of 10,000 or more totalled 18,834 units in July, down from 23,155 in July 2025, CMHC said. The year-to-date total is down four per cent from the same period last year. The seasonally adjusted annual rate for all areas fell five per cent month over month, to 229,074 units from 240,773 in June.
What is still rising is completions, and that is the part most likely to mislead. Construction finished on 19,773 units in July, up 8.1 per cent from June. Those are homes started years ago. The stock of units actually under construction in centres of 50,000 or more slipped to 373,091 from 375,469 a month earlier.
“Although the pipeline of homes under construction remains substantial and completions are increasing, fewer new projects are being started in many markets, notably in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto,” said Tania Bourassa-Ochoa, deputy chief economist at CMHC, in the release. Starts are likely to remain subdued over the coming months, she said, reflecting ongoing challenges in bringing new projects to market.
The gap is widest in Quebec City and Calgary
Canadanewsmedia compared CMHC’s approved-but-unstarted counts against its under-construction counts for each of the nine census metropolitan areas the agency reports separately. The ratio varies enormously by city.
Quebec City had 8,112 approved units waiting and 10,455 under construction in July, or roughly 78 shelved units for every 100 being built, the widest gap in the country. Calgary was next at about 72 per 100, with 17,698 approved units unstarted against 24,547 under construction. Vancouver followed at about 60 per 100. Its 35,751 approved units on hold are the largest raw backlog of any Canadian metropolitan area, and they rose 1.9 per cent in a single month.
Toronto sits at the other end of the range. Its 17,878 approved-but-unstarted units are half Vancouver’s total, and measured against 92,749 units under construction the ratio works out to about 19 per 100, the lowest of the nine. The national figure is roughly 38 per 100.
That low Toronto ratio is not a sign of health. Toronto’s actual starts fell 10 per cent in July on weaker multi-unit activity, and its completions dropped 24.1 per cent month over month, to 1,009 units from 1,329 in June. The ratio is low because Toronto still has an unusually large volume of towers being finished, not because new ones are being launched. Vancouver’s actual starts fell 42 per cent year over year, the steepest decline among the three centres CMHC singled out. Montreal was the exception, posting a three per cent year-over-year gain on higher multi-unit starts.
Permits keep coming, shovels do not
Statistics Canada’s building permits data, released Aug. 12, points the same way from the municipal side. Residential construction intentions rose $479.7 million, or 6.3 per cent, to $8.1 billion in June, led by the multi-unit component. Over the second quarter as a whole, however, the residential sector fell 4.3 per cent in constant dollars to $21.1 billion, and 80,000 units were authorized nationally, down from 82,200 in the same quarter a year earlier.
Municipalities, in other words, are still approving housing at close to last year’s pace. Developers are increasingly declining to build it. CMHC described the mechanism in its Spring 2026 Housing Supply Report in March, when it said softer buyer demand and tighter financing conditions for homebuilders were producing project delays, cancellations or conversion to rentals, with Vancouver and Toronto most affected.
“Since construction timelines can span years, a slowdown in starts today sets the stage for future supply constraints,” Bourassa-Ochoa said in that report.
The immediate effect runs the other way. Elevated completions and softer demand have loosened resale conditions. The Canadian Real Estate Association’s national MLS Home Price Index was down 3.3 per cent year over year in July, though it edged up 0.1 per cent from June, the first monthly increase in the measure since November 2024. The national average sale price was $674,819, up 0.2 per cent from a year earlier. There were 4.7 months of inventory nationally at the end of July, the lowest reading so far in 2026.
Both agencies update the picture on the same day. CMHC releases August housing starts on Sept. 16, and Statistics Canada publishes July building permits that morning as well. CREA’s August resale figures are due Sept. 15.
Sources: CMHC, Housing starts and construction data for July 2026 (Aug. 18, 2026); CMHC, Spring 2026 Housing Supply Report (March 11, 2026); Statistics Canada, Building permits, June 2026 (Aug. 12, 2026); CREA National Statistics (Aug. 18, 2026). City-level ratios are Canadanewsmedia calculations from CMHC’s published July tables.
