Canada Housing Starts Rise to 140,700 Units in June
July 9 (Bloomberg) - Canadian housing starts rose in June on construction of both single - and multiple -unit homes, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said today from Ottawa.
The total of 140,700 units on an annualized basis compared with a revised 130,300 units in May. Economists anticipated the pace of starts would be 130,000 units, according the median of 17 responses in a Bloomberg survey. Recent data on Canada's housing market, which the Bank of Canada said in April would cut 1.1 percentage points from growth in 2009, indicate the economy may be recovering from its first recession since 1992.
"The data are consistent with other measures, including home sales and building permits, that suggest that we are making a significant move off the lows, perhaps in response to low mortgage rates and diminished fears that recession will turn into depression," Avery Shenfeld, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce's chief economist, said in a note to clients.
The total value of permits issued by municipalities jumped 15 percent to C$5.02 billion ($4.34 billion), Statistics Canada said July 7 in Ottawa. Existing home sales rose 8 percent from the previous month on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Canadian Real Estate Association said June 15 in a statement from Ottawa.
Canada will contract 2.3 percent in 2009 and grow 1.6 percent in 2010, the IMF said yesterday. The IMF had predicted in April the Canadian economy would shrink 2.5 percent this year before rebounding to 1.2 percent in 2010. The annual pace of work on projects such as apartments and condominiums in cities rose 11 percent from May to 67,000 units, CMHC said today. Single-family houses in urban areas gained 7.3 percent to a rate of 53,100 units.
Housing starts will improve over "the next several years" and come closer to the country's "demographic demand" for new homes, which is about 175,000 units, CMHC said in the release.
To contact the reporters on this story: Alexandre Deslongchamps in Ottawa at adeslongcham@bloomberg.net.
