June 8 (Bloomberg) -- Canadian housing starts rose in May on construction of both single- and multiple-unit homes, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said today from Ottawa.
The total of 128,400 units on an annualized basis compared with 117,600 units in April. Economists anticipated the pace of starts would rise to 126,000 units, according the median of 20 responses in a Bloomberg survey.
The Bank of Canada estimated in April that housing will cut 1.1 percentage points from growth this year as increasing job losses and falling incomes lower demand for homes.
“May’s figures are an improvement from an especially bad previous month, but the general outlook for residential construction remains weak,” Meny Grauman, an economist at CIBC in Toronto, said in a note to investors. “Starts are down over 40 percent versus last year, and we expect to see no material improvement this year.”
The annual pace of work on projects such as apartments and condominiums in cities rose 11 percent from April to 60,900 units, CMHC said today. Single-family houses in urban areas increased also rose 11 percent to a rate of 46,900 units.
The natural “demographic demand” for new homes in Canada is about 175,000 units, CMHC said in the release today.
Source (By Theophilos Argitis~ targitis@bloomberg.net.)
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