Housing Economic Account, 2024

New estimates for the Housing Economic Account (HEA) have been added for 2024. Estimates of investment, net stock, depreciation, average age, remaining useful service life and economic impact have been updated for 2021 to 2023 to reflect new benchmarks from the "Gross domestic product, income and expenditure, first quarter 2025" release. Estimates of the environmental impact have been revised back to 2009 to bring in the updated physical flow account for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The estimates of housing stock in units were updated along with the gross domestic product release for the first quarter of 2025 to incorporate improved sectoral distributions of housing assets. The revised housing stock in units data have been integrated into the HEA starting in 2021. Therefore, there are statistical breaks in the sector and social housing distributions of housing investment, depreciation and net stock between 2020 and 2021. The full revised housing stock in units data (1961 to 2020) will be incorporated into the HEA release in April 2026.

Housing stock in units is a dwelling concept and is based on the Census of Population dwelling counts. The concepts used in estimates pertaining to housing stock in units by dwelling type, tenure and occupancy are based on the Census of Population. Definitions of these and many other concepts can be found in the Census Dictionary, where dwelling refers to a separate set of living quarters with a private entrance either from outside the building or from a common hall, lobby, vestibule or stairway inside the building. The entrance to the dwelling must be one that can be used without passing through the living quarters of some other person or group of persons. The concept of dwelling is different from the concept of residential property, since one property can contain multiple dwellings. Information on residential properties is available from the Canadian Housing Statistics Program.

The remaining useful service life ratio provides information on the relationship between the timing and average age of investments in housing assets and their associated expected service lives, providing additional information on Canada's stock of housing assets.

The economic contribution as a result of the production of housing assets due to investment is presented for valued added (gross domestic product), compensation of employees, hours worked and number of jobs. The contribution is calculated for both the direct effect and the indirect effect. The direct effect is simply the impact on the producing industry itself, without assuming that any consequences will follow from the new additional spending. The indirect effects of the initial spending begin when businesses receiving the initial order purchase additional materials and supplies from other businesses who, having received their own new orders, similarly expand their productive activities. The indirect effect is a consequence of actions that businesses take to adapt to the additional demand, beyond those actions taken as part of the direct effect.

The economic contribution variables are estimated using the most recent multipliers available from the supply and use table. Since structural parameters used to calculate multipliers change relatively slowly, supply and use multipliers are commonly used beyond the reference year to measure impacts on target variables for future periods.

The estimates for Canadian GHG emissions attributable to residential investment in Canada include direct and indirect GHG emissions from the Canadian supply chain. These estimates are a subset of the physical flow accounts compiled by Statistics Canada in accordance with the United Nations System of Environmental Economic Accounting. The physical flow accounts differ from those published by Environment and Climate Change Canada in Canada's official national GHG inventory. A description of the differences between the two sources can be found on the Canadian Centre for Energy Information website.