OTTAWA – The interest rate of housing starts in Canada for February picked up, boosted with a jump in multiple-unit homes for example condominiums, apartments and townhouses.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says the seasonally adjusted annual pace for housing starts in February increased to 212,594 units, up from 165,071 in January.
Economists had expected an annual pace of 180,000, according to Thomson Reuters.
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The increase came as multiple-unit urban starts increased by 46.0 per cent to 138,774 units, while single-detached urban starts increased by 6.1 percent to 61,457 units.
Rural starts were estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 12,363.
Regionally, the interest rate of urban starts in February increased in Bc, Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic Canada when they decreased in the Prairies.
Data out today also showed that the value of Canadian building permits issued in January dropped by 9.8 percent from December, the second sharp retreat in three months, Statistics Canada said on Tuesday.
The fall exceeded the two.5 percent decline forecast by analysts inside a Reuters poll. Statscan revised December’s gain right down to 7.7 percent from an initial 11.3 per cent and November’s drop to 12.1 % from 19.9 per cent.
A 21.0 per cent decrease in construction intentions for multi-family dwellings, concentrated in the provinces of Ontario and Bc, was the key reason for that weaker performance in January.
Overall, the need for residential permits sank by 12.5 percent from December. Non-residential building permits came by 4.8 per cent on lower construction intentions for educational facilities, nursing facilities along with other government buildings.
The overall worth of permits issued in the energy-producing province of Alberta, hit hard by slumping crude prices, fell by 5.3 percent in January after gaining 3.9 per cent in December.
With files from Canadian Press and Reuters
