Ontario's housing tracker is two years out of date — here's what the current numbers say

Written October 21, 2026. Ontario's housing tracker figures are the newest the province has published. Housing starts are from CMHC's September 2026 release, published October 16. Building permit figures are for August 2026.

Ontario has a public tracker showing progress toward its goal of 1.5 million new homes by 2031. It is a genuinely useful page. It is also two years out of date — and the newer numbers from CMHC say the picture has got worse since.

First, the tracker itself

Ontario assigned housing targets to 50 of its largest and fastest-growing municipalities and created a $1.2 billion Building Faster Fund to reward the ones that reach at least 80% of their annual target. The tracker shows how each is doing.

Its newest data covers all of 2024. Province-wide, 94,908 new homes were created against a target of 125,000 — 75.9%. That is below the 80% threshold the fund itself uses.

Worth knowing what the province counts, because it is not just houses: housing starts, additional residential units, long-term care beds, licensed retirement home suites, and postsecondary student beds. In 2024 that was 73,617 starts plus 14,381 additional residential units, 2,278 long-term care beds, 2,807 student beds and 1,825 retirement suites. Those five add to exactly 94,908.

How far behind the goal is it?

The goal runs 2022 to 2031 — ten years, 1.5 million homes, an average of 150,000 a year. By the end of 2024, three years in, Ontario had built 312,451.

That is 20.8% of the homes in 30% of the time. To still reach 1.5 million, the remaining seven years would need about 170,000 a year — roughly 1.8 times 2024's actual pace of 94,908.

Your towns, on the province's own numbers

Bradford built 263 homes against a target of 542 — 48.5%. Three years into a ten-year target of 6,500, it has 1,015 done — about 16% of the homes in 30% of the time.

Newmarket is the sharper miss at 22.3%, and Barrie came closest at 76.1% — still short of the 80% funding threshold. Across all 50 targeted municipalities, 15 exceeded their 2024 target, 10 were on track at 80% or better, and 25 missed.

What has happened since — the part the tracker does not show

This is why the stale date matters. CMHC publishes housing starts monthly, and the province's tracker draws its starts data from CMHC's own survey. So we already know what came next.

CMHC, centres of 10,000 people and over. The province's tracker reports 73,617 starts for 2024 rather than 72,118 because its figures were revised after review; the tracker says so itself and notes its numbers "may not align with CMHC data as published."

Two years of decline. At the January-to-September pace, 2026 finishes near 59,700 — roughly 17% below 2024. CMHC's own six-month trend measure for Ontario, which counts all areas rather than only centres of 10,000-plus and is an annualized rate rather than a unit count, sits at 58,120. A different measuring stick — but also pointing down.

And here is the comparison that should get more attention than it does. In the same 2025 that Ontario fell 13%, Canada rose — up 6% on the same centres-of-10,000-plus basis, to 241,171 starts. Counting all areas, Canada reached 259,028, its fifth-highest year on record. Either way, Ontario was not caught in a national downturn in 2025. It went the other way while the country went up.

That said, 2025 and 2026 are different stories and it is worth keeping them apart. Through September 2026 starts are easing almost everywhere: Canada is down about 4% year-to-date and Ontario about 5%. The striking divergence was a 2025 event. What carries into 2026 is that Ontario is still falling, now from a lower base.

Toronto is the biggest single piece of it: down 31% in 2025, then down another 14% through September 2026, at 17,397 units against 20,129 a year earlier.

The leading indicator: building permits

Starts tell you what began. Permits tell you what is about to begin. A builder pulls a permit before breaking ground, usually by a few months, so permit data is the earliest honest read on whether supply is about to turn.

Statistics Canada publishes it monthly. For August 2026, nationally:

Components are rounded to the nearest $0.1 billion and may not sum exactly to the total.

So nationally the permit total rose in August, and essentially all of the increase was multi-unit buildings rather than single-family homes. Worth noting what permits do not record: tenure. "Multi-unit" covers condominium apartments built for sale just as much as purpose-built rental, so this figure cannot tell you which of the two is growing.

Two honest limits on reading too much into this. First, these are dollar values, not unit counts. Construction and land costs have risen, so a permit figure can go up while the number of actual homes stays flat. Dollar growth is not the same as housing growth. Second, this is the national figure — a rising national permit total tells you little about whether Bradford or Barrie is about to see shovels.

And the honest conclusion is a question rather than an answer. One month of national dollar growth is not a trend, and because the figure is national it cannot tell you whether Ontario's own permission pipeline is rising, flat or falling. Ontario permit data would answer that. It is the number I would most want next, and the one I will add here when I have it.

What this means if you own, or want to

Let me be careful here, because this is where housing coverage usually overreaches.

Less new supply than planned is one input into prices over the long run, not a prediction about next year. Prices are set by what buyers can afford and what sellers will accept. Right now the two are moving in opposite directions — a typical Bradford home is down 9.10% from a year ago even while construction falls. Supply and price are not on the same clock.

What the supply numbers genuinely tell you:

• If you are waiting for a wave of new Bradford housing to pick from, the data does not support expecting it soon. 263 homes in 2024 against a 542 target, and provincial starts falling two years running.
• If you own, the long-run supply shortfall is one of the structural arguments for Ontario housing values. It is not a guarantee and it says nothing about any particular month.
• If you are buying a new build, fewer starts means fewer completions two to three years out, and it is worth asking a builder directly where your project sits in their pipeline.
• If you are watching the Bradford Bypass, infrastructure is one reason to expect housing to follow. The tracker is a reminder that "expected" and "built" are different things, and worth checking rather than assuming.

Where to look yourself, and how current each source is

CMHC's next starts release is November 17 at 8:15 a.m. ET. If you only follow one of these, follow that one — it is monthly, it is the primary source the province itself uses, and it is two years ahead of the tracker.

Sources. Municipal targets and 2024 progress from Ontario's housing supply tracker and its published dataset on the Ontario Data Catalogue (resource "Ontario's housing supply: January – December 2024", last modified December 15, 2025). Housing starts from CMHC's September 2026 release (published October 16, 2026) and the release reporting full-year 2025. Ontario and Toronto start figures are for centres of 10,000 population and over; Canada's 259,028 annual total and Ontario's 58,120 six-month trend are all-areas figures, and Canada's 241,171 is the centres-of-10,000-plus comparable. Building permit figures for August 2026 from the Statistics Canada release of October 14, 2026, as reported by Canadian Press wire coverage; the figures are national and are dollar values rather than unit counts. Bradford resale figures from TRREB Market Watch, September 2026. Figures as published and subject to revision by their sources. General information, not financial advice.