Starts are down 4% year-to-date as CMHC warns of continued weakness ahead
National housing starts fell last month, signalling continued challenges for the homebuilding outlook as the pace of construction slowed.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) said on Wednesday morning that the six-month trend in starts across the country dropped by 1.3% on a monthly basis to 244,149 units. Actual monthly starts in centres with a population of 10,000 or more fell by 2%, to 17,691 units.
While policymakers have stressed their focus on turbocharging homebuilding, this year to date has seen fewer overall starts than the same spell in 2025. CMHC said the current figure of 149,542 units is down 4% from the comparable year-to-date total last year.
The national housing agency doesn’t see any sign of a rapid surge for construction activity anytime soon, either.
“While the current pace of starts is elevated compared to recent years, we expect the downward trend to continue as construction activity moderates in the coming months, especially towards the end of the year,” CMHC deputy chief economist Kevin Hughes said in a statement.
Montreal and Vancouver both saw their six-month trends increase by 6%. In Montreal, that was spurred by higher starts of all home types, while multi-unit starts boosted the uptick in Vancouver.
Toronto saw single-detached and multi-unit starts remain unchanged, highlighting the hurdles facing builders in the city as a sluggish housing market fails to gather pace.
Experts including Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA) chief executive officer Kevin Lee have sounded the alarm on a bleak outlook for homebuilders across the country, with geopolitical turmoil and the eruption of a US-Canada trade war darkening that picture.
Wood market expert Russ Taylor, meanwhile, told CMP last month that some wood manufacturers and producers could face an existential threat from the latest round of US tariffs, which have placed huge levies on Canadian construction materials.
In its latest Housing Market Outlook, CMHC said it expects new home construction to continue declining through 2028 thanks to high costs for developers, low buyer demand and a glut of inventory on the market.
Unsurprisingly, the agency predicts an “especially weak” outlook for the condo market, which has buckled under high-profile crises in Toronto and Vancouver over the past several years.
Ontario and British Columbia are set to see both construction and home sales remain below their 10-year averages, with a better outlook for the Prairies and Quebec.
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