Monthly Housing Starts and Other Construction Data Tables

Excel - Publication

Housing starts facilitate analysis of monthly, quarterly and year-over-year activity in the new home market. We define a housing start as the beginning of construction work on the building where the dwelling unit will be located.

May monthly Housing Starts key highlights

The trend in housing starts was 254,727 units in May 2022, down from 257,833 units in April 2022.
The increase in monthly seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) housing starts in Canada’s urban areas was driven by higher multi-unit starts in May.
Among Vancouver, Toronto and Montréal, Vancouver was the only market to post a decrease in total SAAR starts. This was driven by lower multi-unit and single-detached starts.

May Standalone Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR)

The standalone monthly SAAR of total housing starts for all areas in Canada in May was 287,257 units, an increase of 8% from April.
The SAAR of total urban starts increased by 8% in May to 264,162 units.
Multi-unit urban starts increased by 13% to 201,193 units in May. Single-detached urban starts decreased by 4% to 62,969 units.
Rural starts were estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 23,095 units.

Geography: Edition:

Author:: CMHC
Document Type:: Excel
Date Published:: June 15, 2022

Download

Our Monthly Housing Starts and Other Construction data tables are issued on the 11^th working day of the month. Exact release dates can be found in our Reports Calendar.

You can also view this data on our Housing Market Information Portal.

About Monthly Housing Starts and Construction Data

A housing start is defined as the beginning of construction work on the building where the dwelling unit will be located. This can be described in 2 ways:

The stage when the concrete has been poured for the whole of the footing around the structure.
An equivalent stage where a basement will not be part of the structure.

Housing starts statistics are organized to facilitate an analysis of monthly, quarterly and year-over-year changes. Actual and seasonally-adjusted housing starts data are presented separately. Select under construction and absorption data are also included.

Housing starts, construction and absorption data are used to gain insight into the level of activity and supply conditions in the new home market.

Actual and seasonally adjusted housing starts data are presented separately by region, province, Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) and dwelling type. Select data on under construction and absorption are also included.

These monthly housing data tables reflect:

current statistics
new home starts
construction activity

Data source: CMHC Starts and Completions Survey and Market Absorption Survey.

About the Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR)

The SAAR allows you to compare monthly levels to annual levels for different months of the year. It also gives you a sense of the relative strength of monthly activity.

The time of year can be a factor when collecting data. We calculate the SAAR by:

Using a rate adjustment to remove the data’s seasonal variations.
Multiplying the seasonally adjusted level of starts by 12 to obtain the Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) of housing starts.