The 30% Rule: How Many Homes Bought in Canada Are Pure Speculation?

by Victoria Estate Digest

Nov 30, 2025

Inside the Shadow Market, the Quiet Buyers, and the 20-Year Behaviour Shift That No One in Government Wants to Quantify

Introduction: The Big Lie Behind “It’s Just Supply and Demand”

If you ask the Canadian real estate establishment why homes cost what they cost, you’ll get a rotation of the same four talking points:

Not enough supply.
Interest rates are high, but they’ll eventually come down.
Population growth—it’s just math.
Developers are trying their best, okay?

But ask any regular Canadian—someone who has actually tried to buy a home, rent a home, or simply exist within a two-hour radius of Toronto, Vancouver, or even Halifax—and you’ll hear a very different explanation:

“Investors bought everything.”

It sounds oversimplified. Emotional. Maybe even conspiratorial.

Except…it’s not.

Because for the last 15–20 years, while politicians blamed zoning and millennials blamed avocado toast, one group quietly rewired the entire market:

Multiple-property owners.
Speculators.
Small-scale landlords.
Shadow investors.
Assignment flippers.
Pre-sale surfers.
Parents “parking money” in condos for their kids.
Empty home collectors.

And despite the federal government, the Bank of Canada, and Statistics Canada all having datasets capable of measuring the phenomenon—they don’t publish the real number.

But independent economists, court documents, land registry data, CMHC audits, OSFI reports, provincial tax data, and the behaviour patterns of the market all point to one uncomfortable reality:

Roughly 25–35% of homes purchased in Canada in the last decade were not bought to live in.
They were bought as speculative assets.
A third of the market.
Gone before end users ever stood a chance.

And that’s what this article is about.

Not the morality.
Not the politics.
Not the sentiment.

The math.
The trend.
And the structural consequences that Canada is still refusing to confront.

Part I — The Rise of the “Investor Era”: A 20-Year Shift Canada Still Won’t Acknowledge

Let’s go back to the mid-2000s, when the idea of buying real estate as an investment was still…kind of weird.

You bought a house.
You lived in it.
If you were fancy, maybe you bought a small rental.

But around 2008–2012, everything shifted.

The Perfect Storm That Created Canada’s Investor Class

Several things happened at once:

Interest rates dropped to historic lows
Mortgage qualification became easier
Foreign capital began entering major markets
Developers built more investment-grade condos
Canadian banks became addicted to mortgage lending
Household wealth ballooned
CREA and real estate boards aggressively normalized multiple-property ownership

And most importantly:

Canadians started to believe in real estate as a one-way bet.

From 2010–2020, home values rose so fast that they outperformed nearly every stock index, GIC, and bond portfolio in the developed world.

No business degree needed.
Just buy.
Hold.
Refinance.
Repeat.

This is the period when speculation metastasized into a national sport.

Part II — The Known Data: What We Can Actually Prove

Canadian institutions famously treat real estate data the way Coca-Cola treats its recipe—opaque, guarded, and politely inaccessible.

But over the years, several leaks, studies, and official releases paint a remarkably consistent picture:
the investor share has hovered between 25% and 35% nationally, far higher in major cities.

1. CMHC’s 2022 Multi-Property Ownership Report

Based on CRA tax data (the closest thing to truth we have), CMHC found:

29% of all residential properties in Canada were owned by investors or multi-property owners (2020 data).
In Toronto and Vancouver, the number was higher—over 40%.
In some Ontario cities?
50%+ of purchases in 2020 were by investors.

This wasn’t “mom and pop landlords” buying basement suites.
This was large-scale leverage behaviour.

2. Bank of Canada’s “Housing Vulnerability” Reports (2017–2024)

BoC has been quietly warning for years:

Investors are the largest marginal buyers of homes.
Investor purchases grow fastest during price run-ups—proof of speculative behaviour.
Investors are 3x more likely to hold high-risk mortgages.
Investors are the primary drivers of bidding wars.

In plain English:
investors accelerate bubbles more than end users ever could.

3. StatCan’s Canadian Housing Statistics Program (CHSP)

They don’t publish “speculation,” but they DO publish:

Non-resident ownership
Vacant property rates
Multiple-property ownership
Condo investor concentrations

Match these datasets to transaction timing, and you get predictable patterns:

Spec ownership spikes right before price booms.
Spec listings dry up right before crashes.

Classic market psychology.

4. OSFI and IIROC audits of mortgage lending

Multiple leaked reports (plus the infamous 2016–2019 syndicated mortgage review) found:

Rampant income inflation among investor borrowers
Stated-income mortgages used for rental purchases
Realtors and brokers steering clients into speculative pre-sales
Assignment flipping treated as “income” but not declared properly

One OSFI superintendent summarized it best:
“The housing market is partly a credit-fueled speculation engine.”

Part III — The Missing Data: What the Government Refuses to Measure

Here’s the part where things get interesting.

CMHC knows.
CRA knows.
The Land Registries know.
Your local property tax office knows.
Banks absolutely know (they see the loan files).

But no one publishes:

What % of buyers sell within 2 years
What % of buyers don’t occupy the home
What % of properties are vacant
How many assignments occur annually
Investor vs. end-user mortgage default rates
Properties holding multiple HELOCs
Properties purchased using gifted down payments
LLC, trust, numbered-company, or proxy ownership

Why?

Because full transparency would collapse the myth that Canadian housing is primarily an end-user market.

It’s not.

And hasn’t been for 15 years.

Part IV — So…Is It Actually 30%? Here’s the Real Estimate.

Let’s calculate the true speculative share using layered indicators.

Baseline (Confirmed, Documented)

Investor + multi-property owner share of purchases (2020–2023):
29–35% (CMHC, BoC)

Add: Vacant, non-occupied, or “partial occupancy” properties

Provinces that measure this report:
4–8% of the total housing stock in cities is vacant
(Vancouver hit 8.2% pre-tax)

But these do not include:

Properties occupied by relatives
“Secondary homes”
Empty homes held for price appreciation
Homes used as shadow rentals
Speculation-class pre-sales

Add conservatively: +2–3% speculative.

Add: Short-term assignment and flip behaviour

Assignment markets in Ontario and B.C. averaged:
6–10% of all pre-construction sales
At peaks: 20–30% in certain projects.

Fruit of pure speculation.

Add +3–5%.

Add: Debt-driven investor churn (the HELOC cycle)

HELOC-based serial buyers behave as speculative participants.
Typically: 5–8% of all mortgage borrowers.

Add: +3%.

OFFICIAL + SHADOW BEHAVIOUR = 33–44% OF MARKET ACTIVITY

Round conservatively:
30% is not just plausible.
It’s almost certainly an underestimate.

When including speculative behaviours not captured in datasets, the more accurate number is:

≈ 35–40% of all homes purchased in the last 10 years were not bought for personal use.

That’s not “a few investors.”
That’s a structural inversion.

Canada’s housing market has majority-investor influence.

Part V — The Psychology of Speculation: Why Canadians Became Addicted

Speculation in Canada is not a fringe activity.
It has become a cultural identity.

1. “Real estate always goes up.”

The national religion.
Passed down like gospel.

2. “You’ll be left behind if you rent.”

Fear-based marketing by banks, developers, realtors, and media.

3. “Use your equity! Leverage is safe!”

When interest rates were low, HELOC borrowing felt consequence-free.

4. “Everyone is doing it.”

So people who shouldn’t have been investors became investors.

5. “Higher prices benefit homeowners.”

A political logic trap Canada still can’t escape.

This is the fuel.
Cheap credit was just the match.

Part VI — How Speculators Distort the Market in Real Time

1. They remove supply from end users.

Every investor-bought home is one fewer available to someone who actually needs shelter.

2. They create bidding cascades.

Investors bid aggressively because they use equity, not savings.

3. They normalize overpricing.

Investors buy on expected appreciation, not value.

4. They increase rents.

Speculators expect ROI, so they push rent to cover their costs.

5. They amplify crashes.

When prices fall? Investors panic-sell faster than end users ever would.

6. They pressure policymakers to avoid meaningful reform.

Speculator-heavy markets become politically untouchable.

Part VII — City by City: The Speculation Picture

Toronto (GTA)

Investor share peaked at 42–50% in 2020–2021
Pre-construction assignments common
Condo market heavily investor-owned (over 50% in some areas)

Vancouver

20-year history of both domestic and foreign speculation
Empty homes tax exposed over 15,000 vacant units
Multi-property owner share extremely high

Calgary & Edmonton

Investor resurgence post-2022
Many Ontario investors buying sight-unseen
Flipping and assignment activity growing

Montreal

Historically lower, but rising due to out-of-province investors

Atlantic Canada

After 2020 remote-work boom, investor presence skyrocketed
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick documented “investor clusters” buying entire blocks

Part VIII — The Consequences: Housing Is No Longer Housing

Speculative buying transforms housing into something else entirely:

A commodity.
A financial product.
A leverage vehicle.
A tax strategy.
A retirement plan.
A generational wealth machine.
A status symbol.
An insurance hedge.
A currency storage unit.

Homes ceased being homes.
They became balance sheet assets.

And the fallout is everywhere:

Unaffordable rents
Exploding home prices
Locked-out generations
Worker shortages (because workers can’t live where the jobs are)
Population mobility collapse
Zero social housing expansion
Displacement of entire communities
Developers designing for investors, not occupants

This is what 30–40% speculative activity does.
It transforms the physical housing stock into a financial ecosystem—one that does not care who gets to live in it.

Part IX — The Future: Speculation in a High-Rate World

You might think higher rates killed speculation.

Wrong.

It slowed it, temporarily.
But:

Investors with equity still buy
Private lenders have filled the gap
Pre-sale investors are still active
Assignment sellers are re-entering
HELOC borrowing increased even in 2024–2025
Foreign capital simply shifted to different channels

Unless Canada fundamentally rewrites the rules, speculation will return (and already is).

Part X — The Real 30% Rule: Canada Cannot Stabilize Until Speculative Buying Drops Below One-Third

Every economist who has studied housing bubbles knows this:
A market becomes unstable when non-occupant buyers exceed 25–30%.

That’s the threshold.

Above 30%?
You get:

Price volatility
Rent inflation
Credit risk
Ownership concentration
Higher homelessness
Higher inequality
Investor-driven cycles
Supply distortion
Construction risk (projects built for investors collapse when investors leave)

Canada is currently far above this threshold in many cities.

Part XI — The Conclusion: The Number Canada Pretends Not to See

So let’s ask the question one last time:

How many homes bought in Canada are pure speculation?

Not by morality.
Not by sentiment.
Not by political spin.

But by math.

By verified investor purchases.
By shadow speculative behaviour.
By vacant property inventories.
By assignment cycles.
By HELOC-driven churn.
By non-occupancy patterns.
By multi-property ownership data.
By consistent patterns across all markets.

The answer: