According to recent data from CMHC via the Globe and Mail, here's (at least part of) the housing situation in Vancouver and Toronto:
Metro Vancouver has 4,919 newly built unsold homes on the market (including houses, duplexes, row houses, and condominiums).
Of this total, 3,195 are unsold condominiums. All of these figures exclude homes that were sold but where the buyers failed to close.
Across Metro Vancouver, 37% of the unsold condominium inventory is priced above $1 million.
In the city of Vancouver proper, 81% of the unsold condominium inventory is above $1 million, with more than 14% priced above $3 million.
In the Greater Toronto Area, there are only 701 newly built unsold units on the market, and in the city of Toronto, 61% of these are priced at or above $1 million.
Initially, the 701 figure seemed low to me, but the way I interpret this "unsold" metric is that it's strictly a best attempt at a moment-in-time snapshot of developer inventory in newly completed projects that have never been subject to a purchase agreement.
Missing from these figures are unsold homes currently under construction, and recently closed homes that have never been occupied and are now on the resale market or are simply sitting empty. Again, if a buyer failed to close, these homes would not show up in the CMHC figures.
It also doesn't include homes in the pre-sale phase. However, I think this supply is mostly irrelevant because if the developer doesn't get to construction then that inventory quickly disappears from the market. It's not sitting there needing to be absorbed (though we developers would love for it to be).
The Globe and Mail article talks about how there are over 40,000 housing units that have been approved in Metro Vancouver but have not yet proceeded to construction, and that "newly built condos in Vancouver are too pricey to sell." But the salient question is one of product-market fit: What housing do customers actually want, and can afford, today?
As we have talked about many times before on the blog, I think we need to view this moment in time as an opportunity to reset our housing markets. In other words, it's an opportunity to look at how we regulate and tax new housing, and at what and how we build, all with the goal of better serving the housing needs of Canadians.
My specific view is twofold: We need to cut the regulatory fat around delivering new homes, and we need to better optimize for medium-density housing.