International Students Down 26%: Student Housing Still Undersupplied at Top Schools
David Chen | Author
Canada is losing international students fast, and at the same time institutional money is still buying student housing. Both statements come from the same week of news, and the reason they can be true together is the whole story.
Statistics Canada released preliminary estimates on May 5, 2026 showing that full-time international students at Canadian public postsecondary institutions fell 26% in the 2025/26 academic year. On September 14, RENX reported that Harrison Street, one of the largest private owners of off-campus student accommodation in the country, plans to keep adding beds. The firm estimates there is only one purpose-built student housing unit for every six full-time students at Canada’s top 20 universities.
What Statistics Canada actually measured — and what it did not
The first thing to get straight is the nature of the data. These are preliminary estimates from a feasibility study, not official enrolment counts. Statistics Canada’s Postsecondary Student Information System (PSIS), the official source, currently ends at the 2023/24 academic year. The 2024/25 and 2025/26 numbers were produced by modelling administrative data because official enrolment figures are not yet available.
That distinction matters for two reasons. The direction of the change is well supported, because study permit volumes have been falling since the federal caps were announced. The precise magnitude is not final, and could be revised once PSIS data catches up.
The 29% two-year drop takes the total back to about 300,000, which is roughly the level recorded in 2021/22, the second academic year of the pandemic. To see how large that reversal is, consider the prior trend: between 2003/04 and 2023/24, full-time international enrolment at public postsecondary institutions grew eightfold.
Colleges took the hit, universities took less
The national 26% figure hides the single most important split in this data, which is the difference between colleges and universities.
College enrolment has fallen below its 2021/22 level. Universities, by contrast, declined at roughly half the college rate, but the total is now below the 2019/20 level.
The new-cohort numbers are more dramatic still. Compared with 2023/24, colleges lost an estimated 102,188 new students, a 75% drop. Universities lost 36,740 new students, or 46%. Existing students at universities are largely still enrolled; the incoming class is what has thinned out.
This is the first reason a blanket “student housing demand is collapsing” headline is wrong. A building next to a college that recruited heavily from abroad faces a very different demand curve than a building next to a research university with a deep domestic applicant pool.
Ontario fell hardest, but the geography is being redistributed
The second thing the national average hides is where the losses landed.
Ontario was home to 60% of Canada’s international students in 2023/24, well above its 39% share of the national population. By 2025/26, Ontario’s share had fallen to 54%. Quebec, British Columbia and the Prairie provinces now host a smaller share of international students than their demographic weight would suggest. The Atlantic provinces sit exactly at their population share.
In practical terms, the international student population is not being flattened evenly. It is being pulled back from where it had concentrated most.
The supply side: one purpose-built bed for every six students
Demand is contracting. Supply looks nothing like a market that has caught up.
Harrison Street’s estimate is blunt: across Canada’s top 20 universities, there is on average one purpose-built student housing unit for every six full-time enrolled students. Mike Gordon, the firm’s global chief investment officer for real estate, told RENX that Canada’s provision rate is roughly half that of the United States and the United Kingdom.
That “one in six” figure is a company estimate, not a government statistic, so it should be treated as a directional signal rather than an official benchmark. What makes it worth taking seriously is that independent research points the same way.
EY’s benchmark: 16% coverage and a 1.5% vacancy rate
EY Canada’s 2025 student housing research provides earlier baseline numbers that are easier to verify. In 2023, on-campus residence buildings plus privately owned off-campus buildings accommodated only 16% of total student enrolment. The average vacancy rate in student housing hit an all-time low of 1.5% that same year.
Put together, those two numbers explain why institutional capital still finds this sector attractive: the national stock of purpose-built student beds is small, and there is essentially no vacancy buffer to absorb demand.
EY also cites a Forum REIIF estimate that Canada needs 400,000 additional purpose-built student accommodation beds over the next six years. In the country’s 20 largest university markets, roughly 1.5 million students are competing for about 170,000 such beds.
The counter-argument EY makes — and why it matters more than the shortage number
Here is the part of EY’s analysis that is easy to skip and should not be.
EY warns that if the broader purpose-built rental market continues to soften over the coming two years, students will gain more affordable off-campus alternatives, which could pull some demand away from purpose-built student accommodation. The firm notes that average market rents are typically cheaper for students than purpose-built student housing already.
In other words, the student housing “shortage” is not a fixed quantity. It depends on how tight or loose the substitute channel is. The latest CMHC data cited by EY showed average vacancy rates of 2.2% nationally in the larger purpose-built rental markets, with rent growth slowing — a market moving toward more choice, not less.
EY also offers counter-evidence in the other direction: housing starts in Ontario and British Columbia have fallen 20% and 19% respectively compared with 2023, which suggests supply will tighten again in the medium term.
Any honest read of this sector has to hold both forces at once.
The policy backdrop in three numbers
The enrolment decline did not appear on its own. In 2024, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada announced its intention to reduce the number of temporary residents in the country. The specific target was a 35% cut in new study permits issued in 2024 relative to 2023, followed by an additional 10% reduction in 2025. Provincial and territorial caps based on population were layered on top of that.
Statistics Canada notes that PSIS enrolment data cannot yet show the full effect of those measures on enrolment at public colleges and universities. That is precisely why the agency ran the feasibility study that produced the estimates discussed here — and why the 26% figure should be read as an early reading rather than a final accounting.
There is one more definitional point worth keeping straight. Study permit counts and enrolment counts are not the same thing. A study permit is an authorization to study in Canada. Enrolment estimates describe students actually or potentially registered at public institutions. The federal government’s permit targets and the enrolment decline are related, but they are measured from different datasets, and they should not be quoted interchangeably.
Domestic demand is the other half of the demand story
The international student decline is only one side of the demand picture, and it is the side that gets all the attention.
Harrison Street’s case for Canada also rests on demographics. The firm points out that Canada’s 15-to-19 age cohort is expected to grow for the next five to ten years, which supports rising domestic demand for university education. That cohort feeds directly into undergraduate enrolment at the same institutions where purpose-built student housing is scarcest.
In other words, a portion of the demand for student beds does not depend on international recruitment at all. It depends on how many Canadian teenagers reach university age, and on whether they choose to attend a school away from home. That is a much slower-moving variable than a federal permit cap, and it does not reverse when policy changes.
This is also why the sector’s two narratives can both be defended. The international side is contracting sharply and quickly. The domestic side is expanding slowly and steadily. Which one dominates depends entirely on the institution and the city.
Why “Canada has a student housing shortage” is the wrong conclusion
The temptation after reading that data is to pick a side: either students are disappearing so student housing is a bad bet, or student housing is structurally short so it always works. Both conclusions skip the variables that actually determine outcomes.
At least four factors decide whether a specific building holds up.
Harrison Street’s thesis rests on the first row. Gordon points out that top schools have deep applicant pools, durable academic brands and have grown enrolment roughly 2% a year for two decades. He also said the firm takes the drop in international students “very seriously” and that pretending a significant policy change does not matter would be a mistake. The impact simply has not been felt evenly. In British Columbia, he said, schools such as Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia have remarkably small inventories of near-campus, purpose-built student housing.
At the other end of the spectrum, college towns with a narrow recruitment base and a high international share are the ones facing genuine demand contraction. Statistics Canada’s own breakdown supports that: the college decline is more than twice the university decline.
What this means if you rent, own, or invest
If you are a student renting near a major campus, national rent declines do not automatically reach your street. Purpose-built student housing near campus is a thin market with its own pricing logic, and it does not track the citywide average. Before signing, look at what comparable units in that specific building or block actually leased for over the past year, not at the national number. We walked through the renewal-versus-move calculus in our guide to how rents stabilize after a long decline, and the same logic applies near campuses.
If you own student rental property, an assumption of steady international enrolment growth is no longer safe. What matters now is the enrolment structure and incoming class size of the specific institution nearby. If the property sits next to a college, the 75% drop in new college students has to be part of your underwriting. The broader rental pipeline matters too: the collision between non-permanent resident outflows and units under construction is a second channel that pulls demand away from student housing.
If you are investing, the underlying demand assumption has changed. Student housing may still be among the tightest rental sub-sectors in the country, but its scarcity has to be assessed alongside new conventional rental supply, local rent direction and the enrolment profile of the specific school. Applying a firm’s estimate for the top 20 universities to a college market is the most common version of this error.
What to watch next
First, the 2026/27 enrolment picture. Statistics Canada is working from preliminary estimates. Official PSIS data, or individual universities’ fall registration counts, will show whether the 26% decline continues or moderates.
Second, whether the conventional rental market keeps loosening or tightens again. This is the variable behind EY’s counter-argument, and it determines where students actually go.
Third, whether housing starts in Ontario and British Columbia recover. The 20% and 19% declines will show up in the rentable stock within a year or two, which is the same tension we examined in falling rents versus CMHC’s construction targets.
Fourth, the enrolment mix at specific institutions. The international student decline is not a uniform shock. Two universities in the same city can be heading in opposite directions on housing demand, and the only way to know is to look at their own admissions data.
Sources and the bottom line
Statistics Canada, The Daily, May 5, 2026: preliminary estimates from “Estimating the international student population in Canada using administrative data: A feasibility study, 2025/2026.” RENX, September 14, 2026, by Evan Duggan, citing Harrison Street and EY Canada. EY Canada’s 2025 student housing research, including the CMHC national purpose-built rental vacancy rate of 2.2% and the Forum REIIF bed-shortage estimate. The “one unit per six students” ratio is Harrison Street’s own estimate and is not an official government statistic.
Both facts are true. International student enrolment fell by 124,000 over two years, and purpose-built student housing near Canada’s top universities remains sharply undersupplied by the industry’s own measure. They coexist because the shock is not evenly distributed. The damage is concentrated in colleges and cities that relied on international recruitment, while housing demand around large, established universities is still tight. To judge any single building, look at the school, the city and the substitute supply — not the national total.