Condo and detached housing starts in Toronto trending higher
By Lucas on Nov 09, 2015
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) released its housing starts figures for October 2015, announcing that condominium and single-detached starts in Toronto trended higher.
For all of Canada, housing starts were trending at 206,089 units, compared to 202,793 in September 2015. The trend is a six month moving average of seasonally adjusted annual rates (SAAR).
“New condominium and rental starts continued to push the trend higher in October,” says Bob Dugan, CMHC’s Chief Economist. “Rental starts across urban centres are poised to reach their highest level since 1992 due to low vacancy rates in recent years.”
The standalone monthly SAAR was 198,065 units, down quite a bit from September’s 231,304. The SAAR of urban starts decreased by 16% to 181.442 units. Multi-urban starts went down by 22.4% to 122,187 units, while urban single-detached starts increased 1.3% to 59,255.
All of the regions, including Ontario, Quebec, the Prairies, and Atlantic Canada experienced a slowdown in housing starts, but British Columbia saw a jump. Rural starts were estimated to be around 16,623 units.
Housing starts in Toronto
The trend in Toronto remained mostly unchanged at 45,765 units, compared to 45,782 in September.
“Single-detached and condominium apartment starts trended higher in October,” says Dana Senagama, CMHC Principal Market Analyst for the GTA. “Tight conditions in the resale market for single-detached homes have caused demand to spill over into the new home market. Pre-construction condo sales, which began increasing in mid-2013, are also converting to starts.”
In October 2014, there were 906 single-detached starts in Toronto, and this year there were 1,043. Condo apartments saw a huge increase, going from 1,365 units in October 2014 to 2,345 this year!
The standalone SAAR in Toronto was 38,722 units, down from 58,016 in September. This decrease is mostly due to a drop in apartment starts, though Toronto still had the highest amount of starts, most of them being apartment units.
Brampton had the second highest amount of starts, mostly single-detached units, while Mississauga followed with mostly apartment starts.
