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Ottawa-Gatineau housing starts remain ahead of last year’s pace, CMHC says

October 16, 2025

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Ottawa-Gatineau’s annual pace of housing starts bounced back slightly in September after a steep drop in August, 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 6,213 units last month, up four per cent from 5,991 in August. Most of the increase was due to a rise in the annual pace of multi-unit starts such as apartments and condos, which jumped 19 per cent to 5,052 last month from 4,248 in August. Meanwhile, the annual pace of single-family starts fell 33 per cent to 1,161. The overall rate of starts in Ottawa rose 30 per cent month-over-month to 5,494, while the pace of starts in Gatineau dropped 59 per cent to 719. Developers in Ottawa-Gatineau began building 536 new housing units in September, down 72 per cent from the 1,888 starts recorded in the same month a year earlier. Multi-unit starts fell 75 per cent year-over-year to 421, while single-family starts declined 47 per cent to 115. However, the overall number of housing starts in the region is still higher than it was at the same point in 2024. CMHC says there were 8,952 housing starts in the National Capital Region from January to the end of September, up nine per cent from 8,244 in the first nine months of 2024. Builders in Ottawa started 7,168 new units, up from 5,884 starts during the same period last year. Starts in Gatineau declined to 1,784, down from 2,360 in the same timeframe a year ago. Nationally, CMHC says the annual pace of housing starts in September was up 14 per cent compared with August, helped by increases in Montreal and Toronto. The national housing agency says the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts amounted to 279,234 units in September, up from 244,543 in August. The increase came as the annual pace of housing starts for Canadian centres with a population of 10,000 or greater rose to 254,345 in September, up 16 per cent from 219,408 in August. The annual pace of rural starts was estimated at 24,889. The six-month moving average of the seasonally adjusted annual rate was up 4.1 per cent in September at 277,147. CMHC says actual housing starts for centres with a population of 10,000 or greater totalled 22,375 units in September, up from 18,806 in September 2024. The year-to-date total was 178,033, up five per cent from the same period in 2024. – With additional reporting from the Canadian Press