Housing starts in Canada on the rise

OTTAWA — The pace of housing starts across Canada picked up in January compared with December, fuelled by multi-unit projects such as condominiums and apartments.

The seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts was 207,408 units in January, up from 206,305 in December, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported Wednesday.

Economists had expected the annual rate to come in at 200,000, according to Thomson Reuters.

In Waterloo Region, builders started 303 housing units last month, up from 134 in January a year ago.

An increase in apartment construction accounted for most of the difference.

Foundations were poured for apartment buildings containing 198 units in January, up from 60 a year earlier. Work started on 87 single-detached homes, up from 61.

Despite the year-over-year increase, apartment starts last month were much lower than December’s 631 units.

The housing corporation said starts in the Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo census metropolitan area were trending at an adjusted annual rate of 4,635 in January, down from 5,211 in December.

They trended lower because of the drop in apartment starts, it said.

“Apartment starts, after trending at the highest level in more than 18 months in December, pulled back to a more sustainable level in January,” Erica McLerie, a senior market analyst with the corporation, said in a news release.

“The trend for single-detached homes was slightly higher in January while the trends for semis and townhouses eased,” she said.

“Job and wage growth, in-migration and a very tight resale market are supporting the demand for new homes.”

Nationally, January’s stronger-thanexpected housing starts follow a year that saw a record number of Canadian home resales, noted Royal Bank senior economist Nathan Janzen.

“The recent strength in housing starts has been largely concentrated in Ontario, where resale markets have also been the hottest in recent months (and January temperatures were warmer than usual),” Janzen wrote in a report.

However, Janzen expects the pace of housing starts will slow as the year progresses.

The increase in overall home starts in January came as an increase in multipledwelling projects offset a decline in singledetached construction.

The rate of multiple urban starts increased by 4.2 per cent to 125,886 on a seasonally adjusted basis in January, while the rate of single-detached urban starts fell 4.6 per cent to 63,802 units.

Rural starts were estimated at 17,720 units.

The housing corporation said the sixmonth moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rate was 199,834 units in January compared with 197,881 in December.

Regionally, the rate of urban starts increased in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, but fell in British Columbia, the Prairies and Quebec.

Urban centres in Ontario came in at 96,883 units, up from 77,474 in December. The pace of urban starts in British Columbia fell to 26,308 compared with 39,011 in December.