Canadian January Housing Starts Down Slightly

Canadian housing starts were at a rate of 224,865 units in January, down 0.7 percent from the rate of 226,346 units in December 2017, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). This data is a six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates (SAAR) of housing starts.

“The national trend in housing starts held steady for a third consecutive month in January, remaining near the 10-year high set in December,” said Bob Dugan, CMHC’s chief economist, in a statement. “This reflects higher starts of multi-unit dwellings in urban centers in recent months, which has offset lower starts of single-detached homes.”

In other news, the CMHC released a new study—Examining Escalating House Prices in Large Canadian Metropolitan Centres—that shows that strong economic and population growth, together with low mortgage rates, have been important drivers of house price growth in Canada. The study looks at data from Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton from 2010 to 2016.

Complete information on housing data in Canada is available via CMHC's Housing Market Information Portal.