Housing starts are trending in the right direction again.

On July 9, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) released its report on housing starts for June. The report shows that the rolling six-month trend in housing starts rose from 197,063 units in May to 199,655 in June. The trend is a measure of the average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates (SAAR) of housing starts.

“The national trend in housing starts increased in June,” said CMHC chief economist Bob Dugan. “This reflects higher multi-family starts in Toronto and Montreal following declines in these centres in recent months from COVID-19 measures. Housing starts continued to decline in most other centres in June, including Vancouver. We expect national starts to trend lower in the near term as a result of the negative impact of COVID-19 on economic and housing indicators.”

The standalone monthly SAAR of housing starts for all areas in Canada was 211,681 units in June, an increase of 8.3 percent from 195,453 units in May. The SAAR of urban starts increased by 8.7 percent in June to 196,675 units. Multiple urban starts increased by 13.0 percent to 154,602 units in June while single-detached urban starts decreased by 4.5 percent to 42,073 units.

Demand for housing in Ontario was strong. This is quite likely because June was the first full month of construction activity in the province since the pandemic began. Starts overall increased by 37 percent to 76,341. Single-family home starts rose by 2 percent to 17,448, while multi-unit starts increased by 53 percent to 58,893.

Those Ontario municipalities with the strongest overall monthly performances included Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge (363 percent), Sudbury (273 percent), St. Catharines-Niagara (251 percent). Each of those regions saw significant increases in multi-family housing starts.

Starts, meanwhile, contracted in Kingston (-69 percent), Peterborough (-66 percent) and Brantford (-27 percent). In each case, the municipality recorded significant declines in its multi-family sector.