Tariffs set to raise home building and renovation costs

Canadian homeowners planning a renovation should expect building materials to keep getting more expensive, after a new industry report warned that escalating tariffs between Canada and the United States are driving up the cost of home construction on both sides of the border.

What happened

According to hpacmag.com, a report from the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON) found that Canada's counter-tariffs, imposed September 8, will add $9,000 to $14,000 to the cost of a typical Ontario single-detached home, and $18,000 to $28,000 to a mid-rise unit. That comes on top of a $15,000 to $25,000 hit that homes were already absorbing from tariff measures imposed in March 2025.

The report, citing modelling from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and Oxford Economics, put the cost to Ontario at $2.68 billion of GDP and 14,000 construction jobs in 2026, before the September counter-tariffs were even factored in. A preliminary estimate in the report suggests 2027 housing starts in Ontario could land 8,000 to 12,000 units below the current CMHC baseline if no relief is granted on residential construction.

RESCON president Richard Lyall, quoted in the report, said the tariffs "are not prosperity measures and will make building homes more expensive in both Canada and the U.S." The report lists structural steel and rebar, wiring, vinyl products, radiators, cabinet hardware, carpets and heat pumps among the materials affected by the tariffs and counter-tariffs, warning that builders will pass the added costs on to buyers and renters rather than absorb them.

What it means for renovation costs

The same supply chains that feed new-home construction also supply renovation materials, so the same cost pressure applies to projects already underway or being quoted in Canadian homes. A few areas called out in the report line up directly with common renovation jobs:

• Wiring. A full House rewiring typically runs around $10,500 for a mid-range job, and copper wire and electrical components are among the materials named in the report as exposed to tariffs.
• Heat pumps. A ducted heat pump installation is currently about $12,000, and heat pumps are specifically named as a tariff-affected product.
• Cabinet hardware. Kitchen remodels, where hardware and fittings are a meaningful line item, typically cost $27,900 for a mid-range job; see our Kitchen remodel for how that breaks down by cabinet and worktop choice.
• Carpets and flooring. A flooring job across a typical 25 m² room is currently about $4,500; carpet is one of the materials named in the report.
• Vinyl products. Vinyl siding and vinyl-framed windows both use the vinyl products named in the report; a window replacement project runs around $5,400.

None of these figures move because of the tariff news itself — they're our current estimates, built from labour hours at local rates plus materials pricing, checked against market prices and real contractor quotes. But they're also the figures most likely to drift upward over the coming months if the material costs the report describes work their way through to retail and trade pricing, the way they typically do with a lag of a few months after a tariff takes effect.

What homeowners can do

For anyone with a renovation in the pipeline, the practical takeaway from the report is to lock in pricing sooner rather than later. Material costs quoted today reflect a narrower slice of the tariff impact than costs are likely to reflect by spring, since contractors typically order materials close to the start of a job rather than carrying large stockpiles.

It's also worth getting more than one quote and comparing them against a realistic baseline rather than assuming the first number is fair. Our "is my quote fair" tool checks a specific quote against local labour rates and current material costs, which is useful if a contractor's number has moved noticeably since you last priced a project, or if you're trying to work out how much of an increase is genuinely tariff-driven versus just a wide quote.

The report doesn't put a number on how much of the increase is likely to reach renovation (as opposed to new-build) pricing, and we haven't seen Canadian renovation-specific data on it, so we're not going to guess at a figure. What the report does make clear is the list of materials most exposed — steel and rebar, wiring, vinyl, radiators, cabinet hardware, carpets and heat pumps — and homeowners planning projects that lean heavily on any of those materials have the clearest reason to move on quotes while current pricing holds.

We'll keep tracking how material costs move through our live cost model and update our guides as pricing data comes in, rather than publishing a one-off estimate of the tariff impact on renovation costs specifically.