Ottawa-Gatineau’s annual pace of housing starts in August plummeted 65 per cent compared with July, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says.
The national housing agency says the region’s seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts came in at 6,001 units in August, down from 17,294 in July.
Most of the decline was due to a steep drop in the annual pace of multi-unit starts such as apartments and condos, which fell a whopping 73 per cent to 4,248 last month from 15,540 in July.
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Meanwhile, the annual pace of single-family starts held steady at about 1,750.
The overall rate of starts in Ottawa dropped 70 per cent to 4,229, while the pace of starts in Gatineau declined 47 per cent to 1,772.
Homebuilders in Ottawa-Gatineau started work on 531 new housing units in August, a 29 per cent decrease from 745 units a year earlier. Multi-unit starts dipped 39 per cent year-over-year to 354, while single-family starts rose nine per cent to 177.
Still, actual housing starts in the region remain ahead of last year’s tallies.
CMHC says there were 8,416 housing starts in the National Capital Region in the first eight months of 2025, up 32 per cent from 6,356 in the same period a year ago.Â
Builders in Ottawa launched 6,694 new units from January to the end of July, up from 4,374 during the same period last year. Starts in Gatineau declined to 1,722, down from 1,982 in August 2024.
Nationally, CMHC says the annual pace of housing starts in August fell 16 per cent compared with July.
The national housing agency says the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts came in at 245,791 units in August, down from 293,537 in July.
The drop came as the seasonally adjusted annual pace of housing starts for Canadian centres with a population of 10,000 or greater fell to 223,728 in August compared with 272,330 a month earlier.
The annual rate of rural starts was estimated at 22,063 in August.
The six-month moving average of the overall seasonally adjusted annual rate was up 1.6 per cent in August at 267,259 units.
CMHC says actual housing starts in August for centres with a population of 10,000 or greater totalled 18,408, compared with 16,775 in August 2024.
– With additional reporting from the Canadian Press
