After winter’s typical decline, housing starts in Metro Vancouver increased compared with the previous month, according to a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) report issued April 10.
Vancouver Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) housing starts were trending at 18,195 units in March compared to 17,462 units in February, said the report. The trend is a six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates of housing starts.
“Single-detached home construction continued to increase in step with the trend established last spring,” said Robyn Adamache, principal, market analysis at CMHC. “Multi-family housing starts also moved higher in March, following a brief dip in apartment and town home starts the previous month.”
However, across Canada, housing starts were trending slightly down month over month, with 179,016 units in March compared with 180,236 in February.
Housing starts in the Abbotsford-Mission CMA were also trending slightly lower at 499 units in March 2015, down from 536 units in February.
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.
