“The momentum of the past several months continued to push up the starts trend in August. However, continued weakness in employment and the trend to a cooler resale housing market will limit further growth in the housing starts trend,” said Warren Philp, CMHC Market Analyst for the Thunder Bay CMA.
CMHC uses the trend measure as a complement to the monthly SAAR of housing starts to account for considerable swings in monthly estimates and obtain a more complete picture of the state of the housing market. In some situations, analysing only SAAR data can be misleading in some markets, as they are largely driven by the multiples segment of the markets which can be quite variable from one month to the next.
The standalone monthly SAAR was 290 units in August down from 413 units in July. This decline in the monthly SAAR occurred since there were no apartment starts this month after a relatively high number in July.