Housing starts주택 착공

What is it?

Housing starts are the number of new homes on which construction has begun, usually counted when work on the foundation starts. In Canada, CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) surveys and publishes them every month.

A home started today is usually ready to move into one to three years later, and condo towers take longer. So the starts number tells you less about today’s prices and more about the supply of new homes a few years from now.

CMHC says the data is used to analyze monthly, quarterly and year-over-year construction activity in the new home market and helps give a clearer picture of upcoming new housing supply.

The three numbers in a CMHC release

• Actual starts: homes where construction actually began that month, usually reported for centres with a population of 10,000 or more and compared with the same month last year.
• Seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR): the month’s pace converted to a full year, with the busy spring-and-summer season and the slow winter smoothed out, so months can be compared.
• Six-month trend: a six-month moving average of the annual rate. One condo project can make a single month jump, so CMHC says to read the trend alongside the monthly rate.

What it means for buyers

• Fewer starts now means fewer new homes to move into two to four years from now. It affects supply years ahead, not today’s price.
• Fewer starts also means developers do not begin construction until enough units are sold. For pre-construction (homes sold before they are built), check whether the project has actually started and how many times the occupancy date has moved.
• Toronto’s number is mostly multi-unit starts such as condos. Looking only at single-detached starts misses the overall trend.
• Release date: CMHC publishes the previous month’s starts on the eleventh business day of each month. The exact date is at the end of each CMHC release.

Example: the September 2026 release (October 16, 2026)

Why “down 11%” and “up 3%” appear in the same month: one is the actual count compared with last year, the other is the seasonally adjusted annual rate compared with the previous month. Check which basis is used first.