The Unassuming Economist

A new IMF working paper sheds “new light on the supply of housing units in Canada. It contributes to the existing literature by (i) providing yearly estimates of housing stock and household formation for the 10 Canadian provinces over the period 1980-2013, (ii) and by estimating excess supply in housing units for the ten Canadian provinces. The empirical results suggest that the Canadian housing market was in excess supply by about 0.5 percent of the total housing stock by end 2013. In comparison, at the highs of the 2009 Great Recession the excess supply was found to have reached almost 1 percent, and in the aftermath of the early 1990s housing crisis, the excess supply reached about 0.6 percent of the total stock and house prices went through a decade long stagnation.”