[ CYPHER CODE #920 ]
Population growth doesn’t create housing demand if people can’t afford to buy.

[ CYPHER CODE #921 ]
Immigration added pressure to the system, not liquidity to the market.

[ CYPHER CODE #922 ]
Seventy percent selling nothing isn’t a slowdown. It’s a structural signal.

BRIEFING

Grant here. There are a lot of so-called "experts" who try to sell immigration as a housing demand solution. After all, more people equals more buyers, and surely, more buyers equals market health. That logic is repeated so often it's basically assumed as truth. But with that logic in mind, Canada just posted some startling housing stats that prove mass immigration is definitely not the solution. Let’s break it down.

The figures from the 2025 Canadian housing market show historic lows in transaction volume. Paired with industry analysis, the data shows that roughly seventy percent of licensed real estate agents did not sell a single home last year. The reporting points to collapsing sales activity, elevated interest rates, and a growing disconnect between housing prices and household incomes.

70% of real estate agents in Canada did not sell a single home in 2025 🇨🇦🏡 pic.twitter.com/hWHNM0FhTM

— RTN (@RTNToronto) January 20, 2026

SOURCE

Real estate sales in 2025 reached a historic number – but for sellers, it was for all the wrong reasons.

The number of home sales in Toronto reached a 25-year low in 2025, dropping to around 62,400. In 2021, that number was more than 127,000.

To find another year when home sales were lower, you have to flip the calendar back to the turn of the millennium, when nearly 61,000 transactions took place in 2000.

“Imagine how many more people are (living in Toronto) now than there was 25 years ago? These are spectacularly low numbers,” said Ron Butler of Butler Mortgage.

Homeowners like Hossein Khodadadi have been on the receiving end of slumping sales. Khodadadi bought and moved into a home in Stouffville, Ont., north of Toronto in July 2022. Mortgage rates spiked shortly after he finished renovations. For the last two years, he’s listed the property twice, but it still hasn’t sold.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to cover my mortgage and living expenses. My mortgage is up for renewal this summer, and I need to sell the property before then. It’s been really frustrating,” shared Khodadadi.

The real estate market took a big bet that rising immigration would help boost home sales. But obviously the risk didn't pay off. The flip side of the logic that "more people = more sales" is the fact that immigration has been associated with increasing home and rent prices. Especially in major urban centers where most newcomers settle.

SOURCE

Across municipalities with at least 1,000 residents, a 1% increase in new immigrants was associated with:

• A 0.143% increase in median house values
• A 0.045% increase in median monthly rents

On average, this means immigration accounted for about 11% of the increase in house prices and rents over the study period.

...

In Canada’s 53 largest municipalities – those with populations over 100,000 – the effect of immigration on housing was much stronger. These cities were home to more than 80% of new immigrants in 2021.

In large cities, the study found that:

• A 1% increase in new immigrants was linked to a 0.419% increase in house values
• Immigration explained up to 21% of the rise in house prices
• Rent increases were also higher, although partly dampened by rent control policies

Smaller municipalities, on the other hand, saw minimal or no effect from immigration on housing costs.

DEBRIEFING

What really stands out here isn’t that housing hit an all-time low while immigration rose, but it’s how cleanly the two fell out of sync.

Canada flooded the country with migrants, and prices quickly responded, especially in major cities. Rents skyrocketed, and values climbed, which, on paper, looks like demand working exactly as expected. But unfortunately, transactions didn’t follow.

The fact is that immigration applied upward pressure, resulting in homes becoming more expensive instead of more accessible.

Population growth was expected to carry the market forward, but unfortunately it only further highlighted the constraint.

NOW YOU KNOW

Prices rose. Sales didn’t. That gap tells the story.