Housing starts in Ottawa bucked the national trend in January, trending up slightly according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
Ottawa starts trended up 30, to 5,567 in January while the national rate trended down from 203,304 to 199,169.
A “bounce-back in condominium apartments” is credited with the Ottawa numbers, according to CMHC senior market analyst for Ottawa Anne-Marie Shaker.
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“Historically high inventories of completed and unsold condominium units amid weak employment conditions in the CMA had led builders to reduce condominium starts over the last six months,” Ms. Shaker said in a statement. “This has led to the decline of under construction inventories to their lowest level since April 2012.”
The trend is a six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates (SAAR) of housing starts, meant to account for the possibility of wide swings in month-to-month numbers.
The SAAR for January was actually down from 5,116 to 4,740 as a decline in all low-rise dwellings more than more than made up for the increase in high-rise dwellings.
