The press office gave the city a soothing bedtime story; the table in the back yelled plot twist. And because this is an expose, we’re going to do something wild: read the whole thing—headline, footnotes, and the pages most people never open.

Canada’s federal regulator says “payment shock” is now the single biggest threat to financial stability. But spreadsheets inside banks and new Equifax data suggest the wave of mortgage distress barreling toward 2026 may be far larger than Ottawa is ready to admit.

Mortgage renewals at double the interest rate, condo presales appraising below contract, a record household-debt load and a slowing economy: are the ingredients finally in place for Canada’s first nationwide housing crash since the global financial crisis?

For fifteen dizzying years, the condominium was British Columbia’s unofficial retirement fund, speculative play, and immigration gateway. And yet, what triggered this 2025 volte-face? The collapse is not a single-cause event but a perfect-storm convergence of five structural shocks. This two-part deep dive dissects each factor, cross-examines data sets from CMHC, the Land Title Survey Authority, and private MLS feeds, and weaves in human narratives to explain why the investor’s love affair with B.C. condos has soured—and what that means for every stakeholder in the housing ecosystem.

Across Canada, home values have been astonishingly resilient—even defiant—in the face of economic pressures that would have crushed other markets. Double-digit interest rate hikes? Prices stayed high. Surging inflation? Barely a blip. A record number of newcomers without matching housing starts? Still no crash. But now, something different is brewing—not a spectacular collapse, but a slow, quiet downturn no one wants to talk about.

Cranes dotted every neighborhood—Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, and the city core—heralding a future of gleaming glass towers promising prosperity, community, and homes for thousands. Yet in 2025, the once-celebrated construction frenzy has morphed into a landscape littered with stalled projects, cancelled towers, and angry buyers left holding empty promises and non-refundable deposits.

Between 2020 and 2022, mortgage-backed studios, micro-condos, and co-living buildings flooded the market. Yet much of that demand came thanks to international students, many enrolled with no intention of staying or studying full-time. Now—in 2025—this veneer is cracking.

In one corner: Baby boomers—the generation that rode real estate to riches, paid off their homes, and now sit atop portfolios funded by multi-property holdings. In the other: Millennials—the generation saddled with student debt, locked out of the market, and scared of betting their future on housing that may not appreciate again.

Once hailed as a convenient financial tool to unlock home equity, HELOCs are now fueling a risky addiction: using homes as giant credit cards to fund consumption, cover bills, and even prop up fragile lifestyles. As interest rates climb and the cost of borrowing balloons, many Canadians are waking up to a harsh reality — their dream home has turned into a debt trap.

Canada is quietly approaching the edge of a financial cliff. A towering 1.5 million mortgages—most of them born in the low-interest, high-optimism era of the pandemic housing frenzy—are scheduled for renewal between now and the end of 2026.