The results were driven by significantly fewer urban starts
The annual pace of housing starts in Canada slowed by 13% in January, the country’s national housing agency has said.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) revealed that the first month of the year saw a seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts of 215,365 units, down from 248,296 in December.
The yearly pace of urban starts slipped by 16%, down to just under 191,500, while multi-unit urban starts saw a 20% drop to 146,267 and rural starts came in at a clip of 23,874.
A 3% increase in the pace of single-detached urban homes, to 45,224, failed to significantly offset that overall slowdown, while the six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rate fell by 4% in January to 259,412.
The news arrives as a slowdown continues to grip Canada’s housing market, with interest rates having spiked in recent months and sales activity and home prices falling across many of the country’s most populous urban areas.
Construction costs also surged in that higher-rate environment: the cost to undertake residential construction was up 19.1% annually, with a 12.5% increase for non-residential construction, according to Statistics Canada.
