By Paul Vieira
OTTAWA--Canadian housing starts cooled in December, following a robust gain in the previous month, although they remain at historically high levels.
For the 2021 calendar year, starts were higher from the previous year, bringing some relief to a housing market in which prices are accelerating at a record pace.
Housing starts for December came in at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 236,106 units, a 22% drop from a revised 303,813 units in November, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said Tuesday. Market expectations weren't immediately available.
The trend measure--a six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts--edged downward to 260,567 units for December from 267,606 units in the previous month.
CMHC said that actual housing starts for 2021 were 21% higher than the previous year.
Data issued Monday from the Canadian Real Estate Association indicated benchmark house prices rose 26.6% in December from a year ago, or the biggest 12-month gain on record. The price gain can be partly attributed to record low inventory of 1.6 months--the amount of time it would take, given the current pace of transactions, for every active residential real-estate listing on the market to sell. The real-estate association said the historical inventory average is roughly five months.
Canada's banking regulator has warned that the imbalance between demand for houses and a lack of housing supply represents one of the biggest risks to the country's financial system.
In the December report, CMHC said urban starts of multifamily units, like condominiums and row houses, fell 22% in December, while starts of single-detached homes fell by a milder 4%.
Write to Paul Vieira at paul.vieira@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
This was corrected Jan. 19, 2022 because the original version incorrectly stated the December housing figure as 303,813 units. The correct figure is 236,106.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
01-18-22 0907ET
