Name: Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, housing starts, by type of dwelling unit and market type in all centres of 50,000 and over for Canada and provinces
Creator: Statistics Canada
License: https://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, housing starts, by type of dwelling unit and market type in all centres of 50,000 and over for Canada and provinces — AI AnalysisCanada's housing starts data (Statistics Canada, Table 34100152) spans nearly 38 years of monthly observations across 11 geographies, revealing a highly skewed construction landscape where 75% of all regional records report 27 or fewer starts per month, yet national totals have reached as high as 12Key Findings

The dataset contains 124,575 records with a mean of 192.5 units but a median of 0.0, confirming that the majority of monthly region-type combinations report zero housing starts, reflecting a heavily right-skewed distribution.

Total housing starts range from 0 to a maximum of 12,567 units in a single monthly observation, with apartment and other units posting the second-highest mean at 211.6 units and a peak of 11,237 — indicating large apartment projects are a primary driver of variability.

The homeowner market segment leads all market types with a median of 42 units per record, while co-op and 'other' market types show weak correlations (below r=0.40) with all other segments, meaning they behave largely independently.

Condo and homeowner market starts exhibit the strongest correlation in the dataset (r=0.802), followed by condo and rental starts (r=0.692), suggesting these segments are closely linked in Canada's urban construction cycles.

Four major outlier periods were identified: the late-1980s construction boom, the early-1990s recession trough, the 2008–2009 financial crisis dip, and a post-2020 pandemic-driven surge — each flagged using IQR-based statistical bounds.

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