Housing affordability crisis requires "all hands on deck" response: CMHC
BNN Bloomberg
When Bob Dugan surveys the future of Canada’s housing market, he doesn’t see the rosy picture many long for.
“I'm actually worried that affordability is going to deteriorate rather than improve unless we can do something about it,” the chief economist at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation told The Canadian Press on Friday.
A day earlier, the country had learned from the Canadian Real Estate Association that the actual national average home price was $729,044 in May, up 3.2 per cent from a year earlier, while the seasonally adjusted average home price was $715,290, up 2.7 per cent from April. The average topped $1 million in the Greater Toronto Area and several parts of B.C.
Dugan's feelings about the lack of affordability have been festering within the federal housing agency for some time, prompting it to ring alarm bells last summer, when it revealed the country needed to build 3.5 million more homes than it is on track for to reach some semblance of affordability.
