The Future of Multifamily Housing: Trends Shaping the Residential Real Estate Market
Apartment vacancy, rents, new supply and policy in Canada and the U.S., with Halifax figures and dated sources, for multifamily owners and investors.
Updated & fact-checked Figures are linked to their sources at the end of the article.
Multifamily housing means buildings with several rental or owned units under one roof, from a six-unit walk-up to a 300-suite tower. For an investor, the questions are the same every year: how many units are empty, what new tenants will pay, how much new supply is coming, and what governments are doing to rents and construction costs.
This article summarizes where those numbers stood as of October 2026, with Canada first (and Halifax in particular) and the U.S. for comparison. Market data goes stale quickly, so every figure below carries its survey date. Check the latest release before you rely on any of them.
Where the rental market stands
The 2025 Rental Market Report from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), based on its October 2025 survey and published in December 2025, describes a market that softened after several very tight years. The average vacancy rate for purpose-built rental apartments in Canada’s largest cities rose to 3.1%, from 2.2% in 2024, putting it above its 10-year average.[1]
CMHC gives two reasons: weak growth in renter households, as fewer international students and temporary residents arrived and young adults found jobs harder to get, and a large wave of new rental completions.[1] Rents still rose. The average two-bedroom rent paid by all tenants increased 5.1%, but rents charged to new tenants fell in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Halifax as landlords competed for them.[1]
Rental apartments at a glance
- Canada: purpose-built apartment vacancy, October 2025[1]Up from 2.2% in 2024
- 3.1%
- Halifax: purpose-built apartment vacancy, October 2025[2]Up from 2.1% in 2024
- 2.7%
- Halifax: average two-bedroom rent, October 2025[1]Same-sample growth of 6.7%
- $1,826
- U.S.: rental vacancy rate, second quarter 2026[4]All rental housing, not only apartments
- 7.3%
The picture differs a lot between cities. Calgary and Edmonton had the highest vacancy among large markets, while Quebec City, Halifax and Regina remained among the tightest.
Purpose-built rental apartment vacancy rate, October 2025
Show the data as a table
| Vacancy rate | Value |
|---|---|
| Calgary | 5.0% |
| Edmonton | 3.8% |
| Vancouver | 3.7% |
| Canada (major centres) | 3.1% |
| Toronto (GTA) | 3.0% |
| Montréal | 2.9% |
| Halifax | 2.7% |
| Quebec City | 2.4% |
Halifax: more supply, firmer rents
Halifax is a useful example of how a market behaves when record construction meets slower population growth. The number of purpose-built apartments counted in CMHC’s Halifax survey grew from 59,725 units in October 2024 to 62,411 a year later, and vacancy rose from 2.1% to 2.7%.[2] CMHC attributes the change to slower migration, including limits on international students, and to the steady flow of completions. Vacancy rose most in the zones with the most new supply.[1]
Even so, rents grew faster in 2025 (6.7%) than in 2024 (3.8%). CMHC says landlords raised rents to the maximum the provincial cap allows, and that a vacated two-bedroom unit was re-let on average for 23% more, compared with 4% for sitting tenants.[1] That gap keeps tenants in place: turnover fell, and new, expensive buildings had higher vacancy and some offered incentives.[1]
CMHC’s 2026 Housing Market Outlook, based on information available as of January 15, 2026, expects vacancy in Halifax to keep rising slowly but to stay below its long-term average. It also expects starts to stabilize after strong growth in 2025, with purpose-built rental starts easing slightly, and notes that the rent cap may push some units out of the rental stock, mostly into condominiums.[3]
| Year | Apartment starts | Vacancy rate | Average two-bedroom rent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 3,828 | 1.0% | $1,628 |
| 2024 | 3,471 | 2.1% | $1,707 |
| 2025 | 5,643 | 2.7% | $1,826 |
| 2026 (forecast) | 3,700 to 5,300 | 2.9% | $1,919 |
| 2027 (forecast) | 3,450 to 4,750 | 3.1% | $2,000 |
| 2028 (forecast) | 3,350 to 4,450 | 3.3% | $2,120 |
New supply and the construction pipeline
Across Canada, CMHC expects rental construction to start slowing in the second half of 2026, as developers respond to higher vacancy and slower rent growth, with fewer new project proposals through 2028.[3] For an owner of existing buildings, that matters in two ways. Completions already under way will compete for tenants for the next year or two. After that, a thinner pipeline could tighten the market again, especially if immigration picks up. CMHC names a return of international migration to historical levels as a risk that would lower vacancy and raise rent growth.[3]
In the U.S., the Census Bureau’s August 2026 estimates put starts of units in buildings with five or more units at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 344,000, and completions in that category at 302,000.[5] Monthly figures are volatile and have wide error margins, so look at the trend over several months before drawing conclusions.
Policy that affects owners and developers
Several federal and provincial measures shape the numbers on a Canadian apartment project:
- GST relief on new rental buildings. The federal purpose-built rental housing rebate returns 100% of the GST, or the federal part of the HST, on qualifying new rental buildings. Construction must begin after September 13, 2023 and before 2031, and the building must be substantially completed before 2036. At least 90% of the units must be held for long-term rental, and condominiums and substantial renovations are excluded. Nova Scotia is one of the provinces that also rebates its portion of the HST.[6]
- Low-cost construction loans. CMHC’s Apartment Construction Loan Program lends to eligible rental projects from construction through to stabilized operations, for up to 100% of the cost of the residential component.[7] CMHC also cites its MLI Select insurance program as one of the incentives keeping construction going in Halifax.[3]
- Nova Scotia’s rent cap. Annual rent increases for existing tenants are capped at 5%. The province extended the cap to December 31, 2027; it would otherwise have expired at the end of 2025.[8] For a buyer, the cap limits how quickly below-market rents in an older building can be brought up while the same tenants stay.
- Interest rates. The Bank of Canada’s policy rate has been 2.25% since October 2025, and was held there at its September 2, 2026 decision.[9] That is well below the 5% peak set in July 2023,[10] which has eased financing costs for both buyers and developers.
In the U.S., rent regulation is set by states and cities, so the rules vary widely. There is no national equivalent of a provincial rent cap.
What this means for an apartment investor
- Underwrite on the rent a new tenant will pay today, not last year’s asking rent. In several Canadian cities, rents on new leases fell in 2025 while in-place rents kept rising. A building’s rent roll and the current market can point in different directions.
- Price in lease-up time and incentives for new buildings. CMHC reports higher vacancy in newly built, higher-rent units, including in Halifax. A pro forma that assumes immediate stabilization is optimistic.
- Watch exposure to student and newcomer demand. CMHC found vacancy rose most near post-secondary institutions where international student demand fell.[1] Buildings that relied on that demand may take longer to fill.
- Model the rent cap. In Nova Scotia, the gap between in-place and market rent closes only when units turn over. Low turnover means slower revenue growth than the market rent suggests.
- Use the dated release. CMHC publishes its Rental Market Report each winter and its outlook each spring; the Census Bureau publishes vacancy quarterly and construction monthly. Re-check the figures before each acquisition, refinancing or sale.
Sources
- 2025 Rental Market Report — Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), December 11, 2025. Checked 2026-10-12.
- Rental Market Survey data tables: Halifax, 2025 (Excel) — Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), December 2025. Checked 2026-10-12.
- Housing Market Outlook 2026 — Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), February 10, 2026. Checked 2026-10-12.
- Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership, Second Quarter 2026 — U.S. Census Bureau, July 28, 2026. Checked 2026-10-12.
- Monthly New Residential Construction, August 2026 — U.S. Census Bureau, September 17, 2026. Checked 2026-10-12.
- GST/HST purpose-built rental housing rebate (PBRH rebate) — Canada Revenue Agency. Checked 2026-10-12.
- Apartment Construction Loan Program — Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). Checked 2026-10-12.
- Changes to Rent Cap, Residential Tenancies Act — Province of Nova Scotia, September 6, 2024. Checked 2026-10-12.
- Policy interest rate — Bank of Canada. Checked 2026-10-12.
- Bank of Canada raises policy rate 25 basis points, continues quantitative tightening — Bank of Canada, July 12, 2023. Checked 2026-10-12.
