a budget light on housing The 2025 federal budget may have included piles of new spending and initiatives, but there were few with respect to housing. On its own, it will do little to improve housing affordability or stimulate new construction.
Both were highly-anticipated campaign promises in the Liberal election platform . That said, elsewhere in the budget, $51 billion over 10 years was announced for a new Build Communities Strong Fund. The fund will support a wide-range of housing-enabling infrastructure projects, among other things. The latest federal budget on its own will do little to improve housing affordability, stimulate new housing construction, or support increased activity in the resale and pre-sale markets—both of which remain far from normal levels of transactions. Though October saw a 20% month-over-month increase in MLS sales, to 3,325, activity remained 20% below the past 10-year October average. Meanwhile, the latest pre-sale data for the region showed just 1,202 new home sales in the third quarter, the fewest in any quarter in available data back to 2012. Through the first nine months of this year there have been just 4,844 pre-sales, 57% below the past 10-year same-period average. This weakness will ultimately lead to fewer housing starts in the years ahead.
The federal government released its 2025 budget on November 4th, its first with Mark Carney as Prime Minister. On the menu: a lot more spending, higher deficits, and a sharp focus on building a more resilient and productive Canadian economy. However, perhaps a little surprising given the grandeur of Canada’s housing supply and affordability problem, the budget was rather light on new housing initiatives. Just five pages of the 493-page document were dedicated to the matter. Per the budget, Build Canada Homes appears to be central to this government’s housing strategy. The new federal agency, which will focus primarily on the construction of non-market housing, was the single largest housing-specific expenditure in the document. The elimination of the GST for first-time homebuyers, which was announced back in the spring, is the other key policy. The policy remains applicable only on homes priced up to $1 million, with a partial rebate available on homes from $1 to $1.5 million.
Other measures included an increase to the annual issuance limit on Canada Mortgage Bonds (CMB), from $60 billion to $80 billion, and the removal of the 1% Underused Housing Tax that came into effect in January 2022. The $20 billion CMB increase will apply exclusively to those backed by multi-unit residential mortgages, effectively raising the capacity of financial institutions to issue lower-cost CMHC-insured debt for purpose-built rental housing. Additionally, the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan was also included in this year’s budget. Though not a housing- specific measure, immigration policy has and will continue to have far-reaching implications for housing. We have written an extensive summary on the details of the plan here. Aside from the above, just as notable in this year’s budget were the policies that were not mentioned. Nowhere were there details on the reintroduction of the 1970s-era Multi-Unit Residential Building (MURB) tax provision. Nor were there concrete details on cutting municipal development cost charges in half.
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