OTTAWA \u2014 The pace of homebuilding in Canada continues to slow with no near-term signs of a turnaround, said Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. on Monday.<\/p>\n
The national housing agency said the seasonally-adjusted annual pace of housing starts declined 15 per cent in January.<\/p>\n
Housing starts can vary considerably month-to-month as big projects get started, but the agency\u2019s six-month moving average for annual starts also showed a 3.5 per cent decline.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe six-month trend has decreased for the fourth consecutive month,\u201d said CMHC deputy chief economist Tania Bourassa-Ochoa in a news release.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expect new construction to continue trending lower going forward as trade and geopolitical uncertainty, high construction costs, weaker demand, and rising inventories continue to constrain developer activity.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said a near-term turnaround is looking unlikely, and reflects what the agency has been hearing from developers over recent months.<\/p>\n
The pullback comes amid a variety of pressures, including lower immigration numbers and economic uncertainty over changing U.S. trade policy.<\/p>\n
January\u2019s seasonally adjusted annual rate worked out to 238,049 units, compared with 280,668 units in December. It says the January drop more than offset the increase observed in December.<\/p>\n
Actual housing starts were up one per cent year-over-year in centres with a population of 10,000 or greater. Some 16,088 unit starts in those centres were recorded in January, compared with 15,957 a year ago.<\/p>\n
The six-month moving average of the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts was 254,794 units for January.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Mark Carney campaigned on a promise to double housing construction to 500,000 homes a year over a decade. TD said in a report that the previous high was 260,000 in the mid-1970s.<\/p>\n
Last September, the federal government launched a new agency called Build Canada Homes with an aim to accelerating construction. It said it will provide an initial $13 billion to the agency for it to enable financing, provide land and help builders get projects off the ground.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 16, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2014 The pace of homebuilding in Canada continues to slow with no near-term signs of a turnaround,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,12514,101,1170],"class_list":["post-474089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-construction","tag-economy","tag-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}