Bucking the national trend, housing starts in Ottawa were trending up in October, according to numbers released Monday by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
The trend, a six-month moving average of monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates, was up 550 starts in October.
CMHC senior market analyst Sandra Perez Torres said starts rose across the board.
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“The most significant increase this month came from apartment starts where 147 rental units boosted activity in this dwelling type,” she said in a statement. “Condo apartment starts remained muted as high number of completed apartments are yet to be absorbed.”
The majority of the October starts were in the downtown core with the rest distributed evenly throughout the outlying areas.
Nationally, CMHC said the pace of housing starts was down in October.
The agency estimates the standalone monthly seasonally adjusted annual rate was 183,604 units in October, down from 197,355 the previous month.
Economists had expected a rate of 200,000, according to Thomson Reuters.
CMHC says the pace of urban housing starts in October decreased across the country, with declines led by British Columbia and followed by Quebec, Atlantic Canada, the Prairies and Ontario.
It says the rate of urban starts came in at 164,683 in October, down from 177,053 in September. The drop was due to a slower pace of multiple-unit urban starts which fell to 98,673 compared with 114,539 in September. The rate of single-detached urban starts segment increased to 66,010 from 62,514.
The agency says rural starts recorded a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 18,921 in October.
-with files from the Canadian Press
