Housing starts, permits rise across Canada

October 18, 2019

The value of building permits issued by Canadian municipalities rose 6.1 per cent to nearly $9 billion in August according to Statistics Canada—reflecting a steady improvement in home building across the country.
The value of permits for multi-family dwellings increased 18.8 per cent to $3.3 billion, while the August value of permits for single-family houses rose 3.2 per cent to $2.4 billion.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported that the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts fell 2.5 per cent month-over-month to 221,202 units in September compared with 226,871 in August.
However, most economists had expected an annual pace of 214,500 for September.
“This continues to reflect strong demographic demand, both from international inflows and new households created within Canada,” said Robert Kavcic, a senior economist at Bank of Montreal. “There’s a lot of homebuilding going on across the vast majority of Canada.”
The overall decrease in the rate of housing starts last month came as the pace of urban starts fell 2.4 per cent to 208,503 units. Urban starts of apartment, condo and other types of multiple-unit housing projects dipped 0.2 per cent to 159,742, while starts of single-detached urban homes fell 9.2 per cent to 48,761 units.