Not enough homes, and not enough to go around

If you want to know why the housing market feels like a game of musical chairs, two numbers help. One is about homes that do not exist yet. The other is about who holds the money. Neither is anyone's fault at the kitchen table, and both are worth knowing.

The homes. Canada started about 248,900 homes in September 2026, measured as a yearly rate (CMHC). Through the first nine months of 2026, starts across all areas were 181,640, which is 5.6% below the same months of 2025.

So how many does Canada need? In 2025, CMHC estimated that about 430,000 to 480,000 homes a year would have to be started to bring affordability back to 2019 levels. That is nearly double today's pace. The same report put Ontario among the provinces with the largest gaps. When there are fewer chairs than people, the ones with the least to bid with lose first.

Help is on the way. Build Canada Homes was set up with $13 billion in funding, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer projects it will help produce about 26,000 homes over five years. That is welcome. It is also small beside a shortfall measured in hundreds of thousands a year, and builders, lenders and governments will need years to close the gap. People need a way to get a home in the meantime.

The money. Statistics Canada reports who holds Canada's wealth. At the end of 2025, the top 20% of households held 65.7% of all household net worth, an average of $3.5 million each. The bottom 40% held 3.0%, an average of $81,650 each. The gap between them grew by 0.6 points in a year. The same release shows the gap in disposable income widening too, to 46.7 percentage points in 2025 from 46.4.

Why it matters for a home. Wealth and housing feed each other. Those who already own gain when prices climb. Those who do not own watch the deposit drift away and the rent rise. Renters carry a shelter-cost burden of 33.7% against 17.4% for owners, and one in five renter households (20.0%) was in core housing need in the 2021 Census, against 5.3% of owners.

What this does not mean. It does not mean owning is out of reach for you. It means that taking on this market with one income is a heavy lift, and plenty of people are looking for a better way to share the load.

What we are building. goodDEED helps compatible people who can qualify together find each other, work out the money, the rules and the design of one property together, and put the answers on paper before they sign. Licensed professionals give the advice, and we coordinate. We are building the process in the open, and we would love your help shaping it.

Take our short questionnaire at gooddeed.ca/questionnaire, or see how it works at gooddeed.ca/find-a-partner.

Sources: CMHC Starts and Completions Survey (September 2026); CMHC supply gaps report (June 2025); Parliamentary Budget Officer on Build Canada Homes; Statistics Canada, The Daily, 13 April 2026 (Distributions of household economic accounts, Q4 2025); Statistics Canada, The Daily, 21 September 2026 (Canadian Housing Survey); CMHC 2021 Census core housing need tables. This is general information, not legal, tax, mortgage or financial advice.