…the balance sheet of its most influential insurer, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
CMHC – in its 2024 annual report, seen decades of declining homeownership in favour of institutional rental housing development.
It has been a gradual structural transformation, one that redefined who CMHC served, where capital flowed, and how risk was distributed in the housing system. Purpose-built rental has now backfilled a large portion of the condo supply pipeline, which has all but dropped off.
The Numbers Are Impossible To Ignore
In 2024, CMHC held $213 billion in insurance on multi-unit apartment buildings, up from $168 billion the year prior. Meanwhile, insurance on single-family homeowners fell to $162 billion.
CMHC insured 283,700 rental units last year. That’s a 28% spike, driven overwhelmingly by the fact that CMHC’s MLI Select program is one of the only ways a builder can afford to build today.
CMHC collected $1.67 billion in premiums and fees from the multifamily segment alone, a 73% jump year over year.
Liabilities tied to multifamily insurance swelled 34%, hitting nearly $5 billion. To hedge against this exposure, CMHC boosted its Contractual Service Margin (CSM), essentially a buffer of unearned profit, to $3.4 billion in the multi-unit book…
Capital markets don’t lie. And in 2024, they followed CMHC’s lead, straight into the rental sector.
Rental projects are faster to approve, denser to build, and more efficient to fund than their single-family counterparts. They also align neatly with climate targets, urban intensification goals, and CMHC’s affordability framework.
Full Read:
- https://storeys.com/cmhc-quietly-becoming-rental-powerhouse/