In 2023, Quebec experienced one of the worst housing construction performances in the country, with a 32% decline in housing starts compared to the previous year and the lowest level of home building activity since 1955.
This data comes from the latest report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), released Tuesday morning, and shows the extent of the difficulties facing Quebec in this region, which is currently experiencing one of the worst housing crises in its history .
By comparison, the rest of the country saw an 8% decline in housing starts in 2023, a decline that was “almost entirely due to the situation in Quebec,” argue CMHC analysts. In fact, if you subtract Quebec's data from Canada's, the country has seen housing starts decline by just 2%.
Even worse in Montreal
The situation is not much more encouraging for the Greater Montreal area, where 15,200 construction starts were recorded in 2023, a decrease of 37% or 8,900 construction starts compared to 2022.
Apparently, in 2023 we will see an almost complete disappearance of house construction (particularly individual houses) in favor of apartments in the Greater Montreal area. The level of house building has never been this low since at least 1972.
In this region, home to more than half of Quebec's population, 90% of construction starts are for housing (in the form of condominiums or rental apartments), a historic record. However, in the Greater Montreal area we are currently experiencing the lowest level of condominium construction since 2001 and the lowest level of rental housing construction since 2016.
Trois-Rivières and Saguenay in the opposite direction
In most large metropolitan areas (population 100,000 or more) and other regions of the province, the scenario is similar, with an average annual decline of 33%.
More specifically, we are talking about -40% for Quebec, -33% for Drummondville, -31% for Gatineau and -21% for Sherbrooke. The situation is different for Trois-Rivières and Saguenay, with respective increases of 14% and 49% compared to 2022.