Housing starts in Quebec were trending at 35,814 units in December, compared to 35,775 units in November, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). The trend is a six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates (SAAR) of housing starts.
While the yearly total for 2015 (33,029 housing starts) is comparable to that of 2014, activity was slightly up in the multifamily segment and once again down in the single detached home. It should be noted that the total of 6,424 single detached houses started in 2015 is a historical low.
“To understand the sharp decline of the market for new single detached house is to understand the rise of that for apartments. For over ten years in Quebec, population aging, urban densification strategies and the search for more affordable homes have fuelled increasing demand for (and supply of) apartments. Be they condominiums, retirement homes or, as is observed recently, traditional rental units, apartments have supplanted the market for new single detached houses. A context that would reverse this situation appears unlikely,” said Kevin Hughes, CMHC’s Senior Economist for Quebec.
CMHC uses the trend measure as a complement to the monthly SAAR of housing starts to account for considerable swings in monthly estimates and obtain a more complete picture of the state of the housing market. In some situations, analyzing only SAAR data can be misleading in some markets, as they are largely driven by the multiples segment of the markets, which can be quite variable from one month to the next.
The stand-alone monthly SAAR was 37,432 units in December, up from 28,385 in November.