The agency released its semi-annual housing supply report on Wednesday, showing combined housing starts within the Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa regions fell 0.5% in comparison with 2022, totaling 137,915 units.
This corresponded to the annual average of around 140,000 latest units over the past three years. CMHC deputy chief economist Aled ab Iorwerth said the 2023 numbers were “better than we thought”.
“The year 2023 surprised us positively. We were really very concerned that higher interest rates would actually have an impact,” said ab Iorwerth.
“They did have an impact, but it appears that they were on smaller buildings, single-family homes and so on.”
The number of latest residential buildings rose by 7% last 12 months and reached a record level of 98,774 individual units. However, these gains were offset by a decline within the number of latest single-family homes, which fell 20% year-over-year, reflecting weaker demand for higher-priced homes in an environment of elevated mortgage rates.
More housing is required to shut the affordability gap
The agency continued to warn of the necessity to ramp up housing construction to handle Canada’s affordability gaps and significant population growth.
It said housing starts are expected to say no in 2024, although the CMHC predicts Canada will need a further 3.5 million units by 2030 on top of what’s currently being built to bring affordability back to 2004 levels bring to.
The report cited rising costs, larger project sizes and labor shortages over the past 12 months as resulting in longer construction schedules, prompting various levels of presidency in Canada to announce latest programs geared toward boosting the provision of latest rental housing construction.
