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Thursday, September 15, 2011

Housing Starts Fall Short In August

Despite economists’ predictions of 200,000 housing starts last month, CMHC reports that the actual data fell short of analyst expectation.
Seasonally adjusted housing starts for August 2011 were 184,700 units in August, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). This signals a drop from July, when housing starts totalled 204,500 units.
“Housing starts in August were in line with current demographic fundamentals and are consistent with CMHC’s recent Housing Market Outlook,” said Mathieu Laberge, Deputy Chief Economist at CMHC’s Market Analysis Centre. “Housing starts decreased in all regions, except the Prairies with the decline being more pronounced in the multiples segment.”
Urban starts fell by 10.2 % to 165,800 units in August. Multiple urban starts fell by 15.5 % to 101,400 units, while urban single starts fell by 0.3 % in August to 64,400 units. Estimates for rural starts came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 18,900 units in August.
Looking at starts in various regions across the country for August, urban starts fell by 41.4 % in the Atlantic region, by 15.3 % in British Columbia, by 11.8 % in Ontario and by 8.8 % in Quebec,. In the Prairie Provinces though, urban starts actually increased by 9.4 % in the Prairie region in the comparable time period.



Property Wire Canada