Canadian housing starts rose unexpectedly in November and building permits surged in October, fueling Canada’s prolonged housing boom even as the nation’s weak economy contributed to underlying softness in some regions, reports showed on Tuesday.
Groundbreaking on new homes jumped to 211,916 units last month from a downwardly revised 197,712 units in October, bucking expectations for a softening to 197,300 starts, a report from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp showed.
The gain is driven by multiple units, which are up 14 per cent to 114,965. Detached home construction is down 8 per cent to 53,092.
Multiples made up 68.4 per cent of all new construction, the highest level since 1971 over the first 11 months of the year, the data show.
Housing Starts, Canada
A separate report from Statistics Canada showed the value of Canadian building permits surged by a higher-than-expected 9.1 per cent in October, to $7.7 billion, from September, the first in– crease in three months.
The value of residential building permits totalled $4.8 billion in October, up 15.5 per cent from September, while permits for non-residential buildings slipped 0.2 per cent to $2.9 billion in October.
Construction intentions for multi-family dwellings and institutional buildings in Alberta led the gain.