Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation

Overview

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) is Canada's federal crown corporation and national housing agency, incorporated by act of the 19th Canadian Parliament in December 1945 and taking effect January 1, 1946, as the successor to the wartime Wartime Housing Corporation.[1] Known as Central Mortgage and Housing until 1979, its founding mandate was to house returning war veterans and administer the National Housing Act; today it administers federal housing programs, acts as Canada's primary mortgage insurer, and produces housing-market research and data used throughout Canadian housing policy.[1]

CMHC's research is one of this wiki's recurring sources on Canadian housing. Its September 2021 Housing Market Assessment rated Canada's national housing market "High" vulnerability — combining newly detected price acceleration with persistent overvaluation — and its own analysis in that edition explicitly found that quick-resale speculation was not the main driver of Montreal's price acceleration, a data point the wiki treats as a caution against over-attributing Canadian price dynamics to speculative flipping.[2] CMHC data and reporting also underlie the wiki's coverage of Canadian development-charge and land-value-capture debates and municipal vacancy taxation.[3][4] Together with independent academic decompositions, CMHC's institutional findings feed the wiki's broader case that Canadian housing unaffordability traces to land, not construction costs.[5]

See Also

• CMHC Housing Market Assessment, Canada (September 2021) — CMHC's own vulnerability-rating report, a wiki research page
• Dachis (2023): Buyers Beware — C.D. Howe Institute research drawing on Canadian housing-cost data of the kind CMHC also tracks
• Vancouver's Empty Homes Tax — municipal vacancy-tax case study in the same Canadian housing-policy landscape
• Housing unaffordability is a land problem, not a construction-cost problem — the problem page CMHC's overvaluation findings bear on
• Canada — national context

Sources

1. Wikipedia, "Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Mortgage_and_Housing_Corporation — used for CMHC's incorporation (December 1945, effective January 1, 1946), its predecessor (Wartime Housing Corporation), its former name (Central Mortgage and Housing until 1979), and its role administering the National Housing Act and mortgage insurance. [VERIFY: not cross-checked against CMHC's own primary corporate history page in this pass.]
2. Wiki page CMHC Housing Market Assessment, Canada (September 2021) — used for the September 2021 HMA's national "High" vulnerability rating and the Montreal quick-resale-speculation finding.
3. Wiki page Dachis (2023): Buyers Beware — used to establish CMHC as part of the wiki's Canadian housing-data landscape.
4. Wiki page Vancouver's Empty Homes Tax — used to establish CMHC's role alongside municipal vacancy-tax evidence.
5. Wiki page Housing unaffordability is a land problem, not a construction-cost problem — used for the problem page CMHC's Canadian findings are wired into.