Despite a flurry of activity in the last month of 2023, Ottawa-Gatineau’s annual pace of housing starts stayed fairly flat in December, increasing one per cent compared with November, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
The national housing agency said Tuesday the region’s monthly seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts in December was 10,230, up slightly from 10,117 the previous month.
The annual pace of multi-unit urban starts declined five per cent to 8,280, while the rate of single-detached urban starts rose by 44 per cent to 1,950.
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In December, builders started work on 850 new housing units in Ottawa-Gatineau, a 156-per-cent increase from a year earlier. Single-detached starts increased 12 per cent in the month compared with the year-ago period to 130, while multi-unit starts grew 243 per cent year-over-year to 690.
Nationally, CMHC reported that the annual pace of housing starts in December rose 18 per cent compared with November, driven by an increase in multi-unit urban starts in Vancouver and Montreal. The seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts for December was 249,255 units, up from 210,918 in November.
The seasonally adjusted annual rate for December for urban housing starts rose 20 per cent to 234,705, while the pace of multi-unit urban starts increased 26 per cent to 191,463. The rate of single-detached urban starts fell two per cent to 43,242.
For the full year, CMHC says actual urban housing starts nationally in 2023 were down seven per cent at 223,513, compared with 240,590 in 2022, as single-detached home starts fell 25 per cent last year.
“Following record and near-record highs in 2021 and 2022, housing starts dipped in 2023 but still significantly outperformed expectations for the year,” said Bob Dugan, CMHC’s chief economist. “The decline was driven mainly by a sharp drop-off in single-detached starts and tighter economic conditions affecting multi-unit starts in the year’s final quarter.”
He added, “The recent monthly multi-unit volatility is not surprising as we’re now starting to see 2023’s challenging borrowing conditions and labour shortages in the housing starts numbers and we expect to see continued downward pressure in the coming months.”
With files from The Canadian Press
