Housing starts in the Province were trending at 44,626 units in September, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). The trend is a six month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates of housing starts.
The standalone monthly SAAR was 42,515 units in Sept ember, slightly up from 41,950 in August.
“Considering the recent rate of construction and the course that the resale market has taken, the pace of housing starts will slow down during the next quarters in Quebec. So far in 2012, the total number of housing starts is in-line with our forecast,” said Kevin Hughes, CMHC’s Regional 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, analysing 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.
Single-detached starts amounted to 896 actual units in September 2012. Multiple starts totalled 2,766 actual units in September. Between J anuary and September, total starts have reached 30,067 compared to 30,420 during the same period last year.