Vancouver housing starts remained stable in July compared with a month earlier, trending at 18,345 units in the Vancouver Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) figures published August 11.
The trend, which measures a six-month moving average of seasonally adjusted annual rates, is less than 0.5 per cent lower than June's 18,423 starts.
Housing starts across BC also remained steady, trending at 25,515 in July, compared with 25,445 in June.
Across Canada housing starts were trending at 189,784 in July compared with 185,952 in June, an increase of two per cent.
"The trend in construction has increased modestly in recent months due to in large part to multiple starts, which have strong variability from month-to-month," said Bob Dugan, CMHC's chief economist. "Nevertheless, CMHC continues to expect a soft landing for the new home construction market in Canada."
CMHC said it uses six-month moving averages to account for considerable swings in monthly estimates and obtain a more complete picture of the state of the housing market. In some situations, said the CMHC, analyzing only the monthly seasonally adjusted data can be misleading in some markets, as they can be variable from one month to the next.
