June housing starts in Metro Vancouver rose month over month after a drop in May, according to a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) report published July 9.
Vancouver Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) housing starts were trending at 20,091 units in June compared with 19,408 units in May, said the report. The trend is a six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates of housing starts.
Robyn Adamache, CMHC’s principal market analyst for Vancouver, said, “While single-detached home building held steady in June, multiple-unit starts trended higher. Apartment and townhome construction drove the increase in the trend measure of housing starts this month.”
She added, “So far this year, town home building has been focused in Surrey and Langley, while new apartment projects have been concentrated in Burnaby, North Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey and the City of Vancouver.”
However, it was a different picture in the Abbotsford-Mission CMA with housing starts trending at 555 units in June, down from 777 units in May.
Across Canada, the trend measure of housing starts rose to 183,959 units in June compared with 179,908 in May, said the CMHC.
“The trend in housing starts increased this month as multiple starts trended upward, offsetting a downward trend in single-detached home starts,” said Bob Dugan, CMHC’s chief economist.
“The rise in the trend of multiple starts reflects a 53 per cent increase in seasonally adjusted multiple starts from February to June 2015. Seasonally adjusted multiple starts are at their highest level since September 2012, but are expected to moderate over the coming months.”
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.
The housing starts statistics were released on the same day that Statistics Canada published its new housing price index report and one day after it released the latest building permit figures.
