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The 2025 federal budget landed and I felt nothing.

Not anger. Not relief. Just the quiet realization that the government is solving yesterday’s problem while today’s crisis gets worse.

The budget focuses on housing supply. Building techniques. Infrastructure spending. All based on the assumption that we need more homes because demand is overwhelming supply.

That was true two years ago.

Today, we have the opposite problem.

Home sales in the GTA have dropped 55.6% since 2022. Kitchener-Waterloo fell 58.5%. Ottawa down 51.7%.

These aren’t minor corrections. This is the lowest sales activity we’ve seen in decades.

But here’s what the numbers don’t capture: why people aren’t buying.

My clients aren’t worried about supply. They’re worried about their jobs. About the cost of everything climbing while their income stays flat. About global uncertainty and where Canada is headed.

These are rudimentary facts people live on. Job security. Grocery bills. The ability to absorb an unexpected expense without panic.

When you don’t feel secure in those basics, you don’t take on a bigger mortgage. You don’t stretch for that next property. You wait.

The budget increased GST rebates and allocated billions for infrastructure. Fine measures if the problem was affordability through subsidies.

But the real barrier is speed and cost to market for builders.

If you could cut the time from land acquisition to completed homes, you’d increase builder profit. That typically drives sale prices down. Lower new home prices force resale homes to adjust downward to compete.

Development charges have risen 700% in two decades. They’re a massive cost driver that the federal government barely acknowledged.

Yes, it’s a municipal issue. But when charges in Toronto, the GTA, and Vancouver are choking supply, the federal government can’t just shrug and say it’s not their jurisdiction.

Construction has been a booming sector for years. Population growth over a million people annually created constant demand for new builds.

Now those projects are on hold. Cancelled. Delayed indefinitely.

Construction jobs. Planning jobs. Architecture. Engineering. Trades. The GTA alone could lose 41,000 residential construction jobs.

Those workers bought homes too. They have families. Bills. Mortgages.

When their projects stop, there are no new jobs to move to. The whole sector contracts at once.

This is the human cost of policy built on outdated assumptions.

We need incentives that encourage builders to build regardless of current demand cycles. Create steady supply instead of these wild ebbs and flows.

We need to attack the cost and time barriers at the municipal level. Development charges. Approval timelines. Regulatory friction that adds months and millions to every project.

We need policy that acknowledges what’s actually holding buyers back: economic uncertainty, job insecurity, inflation eating into household budgets.

Instead, we got a budget that assumes the problem is still supply shortage when demand has vanished.

The families waiting for homes that may never be built will pay the price. So will the construction workers losing their livelihoods today.

And when 2027 arrives and we’re scrambling to build fast enough for returning buyers, we’ll wonder why no one saw it coming.

Some of us did. We just weren’t writing the budget.

Is the market really working against you — or just changing?

Every buyer, seller, and homeowner feels this shift differently. The key is understanding how it affects your mortgage strategy.

The best move? Let’s talk it through.
I’ll break down how these policy changes impact your next decision — whether it’s buying, refinancing, or renewing.