Canadian Housing in March

May 5, 2010

CMHC has just released a new Market Overview Report. It deals with the state of the Canadian housing market economy and its trends for the month of March. As usual it is quite complex, but has lots of useful information. Even if you didn’t follow the economy of Canada in March you will be completely up to date after reading it.

The level of seasonally adjusted annual rates for housing starts was 200,900 units in March, the report states. That actually means a drop of 1.8 percent from the February figures. A slightly higher drop, of 4.1 percent, was reported for seasonally adjusted annual rates for urban starts. Their March level was 175,300 units. Year-over-year, the urban housing starts in Canada have increased by 50.4 percent and rural starts were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 25,600 units.

The seasonally adjusted annual rate of MLS sales rose by 1.4 percent, to 523,452 units from February to March. MLS new listings were also up by 5.8 percent, at 945,144 units. That is not all the information the report contains. I couldn’t do it justice if I tried to summarize everything in the report, therefore I certainly recommend you to read the whole document.