Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary Lead the Country With Housing Starts

A new home under construction in North Vancouver on June 12, 2024. (The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward)

While most municipalities have experienced a drop in housing starts, Montreal, Edmonton, and Calgary have been booming, according to a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) report.

Housing start statistics for June, which were released on July 16, show that in cities with over 10,000 people, new home construction dropped 13 percent in June, compared to 2023.

CMHC says this was largely due to lower multi-unit starts, which were down 16 percent year-over-year.

Toronto saw a 60 percent decline in housing starts from June 2023, while Vancouver had a 55 percent drop in the same period.

However, Montreal saw a 226 percent increase, which CMHC attributed to higher multi-unit activity. That city has experienced a 63 percent increase in apartment building construction since the eight-year record low in 2023.

Start levels in Calgary and Edmonton were also up, which made up for the decreases in Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa, the report said. As a result, there was a 4 percent combined year-over-year increase in housing construction in the six largest cities in Canada, CMHC authors wrote.

Housing starts in Edmonton, across all housing types, was up 67 percent. In Calgary, that number was 38 percent.

“The higher interest rate environment appears to have caught up with some of Canada’s major centres as lower multi-unit starts, particularly in Vancouver and Toronto, drove both the SAAR (seasonally adjusted annual rate) and Trend down in June,” CMHC chief economist Bob Dugan said.

“While strong starts growth in June and the first half 2024 in Calgary, Edmonton, and Montréal mitigated some of these decreases, we expect continued downward starts pressure across Canada throughout 2024.”

Both Vancouver and Toronto have seen fewer apartment complexes developed. CMHC says it’s a result of high interest rates and weak pre-construction sales for condo developers.

CMHC’s senior vice president of housing economics and insight says the construction industry is not meeting its potential capacity for housing development across the country.

The Crown corporation says there were 650,000 workers building homes in 2023. It estimates that between 130,000 and 225,000 more homes should be built each year based on current resources, or about 400,000 starts each year.

CMHC has forecasted that Canada needs to build 3.5 million new homes by 2030 for affordability. That’s on top of the 2.3 million already expected to be built.

To meet that expectation, more than 500,000 new homes would need to be built each year. It’s equal to building a new city the size of Calgary each year, according to Michael Fenn, Ontario’s former deputy minister of municipal affairs and housing.

In a recent report, Mr. Fenn said the cost of infrastructure needed to support more housing likely exceeds $100,000 for each new home. The funds would go toward resources like public transit, water lines, schools, fire halls, and recreational facilities.

The Canadian Press contributed to this article.