CMHC Housing Starts for February 2014
By Lucas on Mar 11, 2014
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) released its report on February’s housing starts in Canada, with figures that stay true to last month’s prediction of a stabilization throughout 2014.
For February 2014, housing starts in Canada were trending at 192,236, a slight increase compared to the 191,513 units last January. This is a six-month moving average of monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates (SAAR). This means that the average is based on figures that have been modified to remove seasonal variation, and then multiplied by 12 to represent annual numbers.
The standalone SAAR for February was 192,094 units, a significant increase compared to 180,481 in January.
“The trend in housing starts remained stable in February for the seventh consecutive month. Since August 2013, the trend has essentially remained in the 185,000 to 195,000 range, with month-to-month variations generally of two per cent or less. This is in line with CMHC's outlook calling for a stable housing market in 2014,” said Mathieu Laberge, Deputy Chief Economist at CMHC.
The SAAR of urban starts (locations with a population higher than 10,000) was 7.5% higher than January, reaching 175,584. Multi-urban starts (condos and other buildings with multiple residences) increased by 13.3% compared to January, coming in with 116,458 units. Can’t say the same about single detached urban starts, since they dropped 2.4% to 59,126. Rural starts (populations less than 10,000) were trending at 16,510 units for February 2014.
Atlantic Canada and Quebec saw the greatest increases in housing starts, while Ontario stayed stable. Canada experienced decreases in housing starts in the Prairies and in British Columbia. CMHC’s report from February predicted that British Columbia would experience gains in housing starts this year, but it’s still early, so don’t be surprised if we see a little surge in construction out west.
