July’s Canadian Housing Starts

Your monthly update on housing starts in Canada is now available.

National trend

The national trend in housing starts increased for a second month in July. The trend was 204,376 units in July 2020, up from 199,778 units in June 2020. Higher multi-family starts in major urban areas, including Toronto, Vancouver and oil-producing centres in the Prairies drove the national increase. Following declines in previous months from COVID-19 measures, higher activity in June and July leaves the trend in housing starts in line with the long-run average level of housing starts. We expect national starts to trend lower in the near term as a result of the negative impact of COVID-19 on economic and housing indicators.

 Standalone Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR)

• The standalone monthly SAAR of housing starts for all areas in Canada was 245,604 units in July, an increase of 15.8% from 212,095 units in June.
• The SAAR of urban starts increased by 17.4% in July to 231,995 units.
• Multiple urban starts increased by 18.8% to 184,431 units in July while single-detached urban starts increased by 12.3% to 47,564 units.

About Housing Starts

Like many other government organizations, businesses and individuals, we are closely following developments around COVID-19. The monthly release of our Preliminary Housing Starts data will continue as planned. CMHC will report any impact on our ability to collect housing data.

We track housing starts to gain insight into housing supply.

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:

• usually, the stage when the concrete has been poured for the whole of the footing around the structure; or
• an equivalent stage where a basement will not be part of the structure.

We release Canadian housing starts every month on the 6^th working day.

About SAAR

The time of year can be a factor when collecting data.

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

CMHC uses the 6-month average SAAR with the monthly SAAR of housing starts to obtain a more complete picture of trends in the market. 

Providing information on housing starts is another way CMHC supports you in making decisions on housing affordability and contributes to the stability of housing markets in Canada.

Related links

• Housing Market Outlook
• Housing Market Assessment
• Housing Market Insights
• Housing Information Monthly
• Sign-up to the Housing Research newsletter for research and insight updates.