- Hélène Bégin, Principal Economist, Maëlle Boulais-Préseault, Economist and, Marc-Antoine Dumont, Senior Economist
Spotlight on Housing
Quebec’s Housing Market Is on the Rebound
June 12, 2024
- In Quebec, existing home sales and housing starts have picked back up.
- The resale market is still falling in most of the other provinces, but it’s worth pointing out that Quebec’s market drop was especially pronounced.
- Now, property sales are on the rise for nearly half the province and residential construction seems to have improved since early 2024.
- However, these gains aren’t equally distributed across Quebec. Even in the regions and census metropolitan areas where housing starts have improved, the results vary widely by specific location.
- Most building material prices have dropped since their peak, but the cost of new buildings has not followed suit. Instead, they’re still climbing. This can be explained by rising labour costs, persistently high interest rates and, most importantly, price stickiness—prices often go up more easily than they come down.
- Developers and building product manufacturers have been generally unable to lower their prices, even though material prices have declined.
- Rental construction has started back up in some regions and locations, but there is still an ongoing housing shortage in Quebec. Rents remain high and the increase expected for 2024 is higher than last year’s.
- To sum up, Quebec’s resale market and new residential building construction have both started recovering. Some municipalities have also streamlined their approval process for new rental builds. But it remains to be seen if this will be enough to offset the housing crisis.
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