December 2015 Housing Starts in Ontario

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Jan. 11, 2016) - Housing starts in the Ontario region were trending at 73,916 units in December, down from 74,609 units in November, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). The trend is a six month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates (SAAR) of housing starts.

"The provincial trend in residential starts declined slightly in December. The December trend was fairly stable across the province with the exception of the Toronto and Ottawa CMAs, which both experienced slight declines due to lower apartment starts," said Ted Tsiakopoulos, CMHC Ontario Regional Economist. "However, annual actual starts for Ontario were 68,293 in 2015, up from 56,162 in 2014. Low mortgage rates along with better labour market conditions supported housing demand in 2015".

CMHC uses the trend measure as a complement to the monthly SAAR of housing starts to account for considerable swings in monthly estimates and obtain a more complete picture of the state of the housing market. In some situations, analysing only SAAR data can be misleading in some markets, as they are largely driven by the multiples segment of the markets which can be quite variable from one month to the next.

The SAAR of total urban housing starts was 52,285 units in December, which was down from 85,748 units in November, driven by a drop in apartment starts. Nevertheless, Ontario raw urban starts for 2015 were 21.6 per cent above the 2014 level, with single-detached starts increasing by 9.8 per cent and multi-family home starts increasing by 28.8 per cent. The increase in multi-family home starts was almost entirely attributable to an increase in this segment in the Toronto CMA.

Preliminary Housing Starts data is also available in English and French at the following link: Preliminary Housing Starts Tables

As Canada's authority on housing, CMHC contributes to the stability of the housing market and financial system, provides support for Canadians in housing need, and offers objective housing research and advice to Canadian governments, consumers and the housing industry.

For more information, visit our website at www.cmhc.ca or follow us on Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Additional data is available upon request.

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Tables and a graph are available at the following address: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/1038946e.pdf