AI Analysis: Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, housing starts in all centres 10,000 and over, Canada, provinces, and census metropolitan areas, 6-month moving average

Executive Summary

Canada's housing starts (6-month moving average) have trended strongly upward over 35 years, peaking at 255,646 units in September 2022 and remaining near historic highs at 238,973 units as of February 2026, driven overwhelmingly by multi-unit construction. The data — spanning 50,622 records across 47 geographic areas — reveals a dramatic long-term structural shift away from single-detached homes toward apartments, condos, and row housing, particularly since the 2010s. While national totals remain stable, regional analysis uncovers 361 localized outliers, underscoring that housing booms and busts are highly concentrated in specific metropolitan markets.

Key Findings

• Canada's total housing starts peaked at 255,646 units in September 2022 and remain elevated at 238,973 units as of February 2026, reflecting sustained post-pandemic construction activity.
• Multi-unit dwellings (Multiples) are the dominant driver of national housing starts, correlating with Total units at r=0.926, while Single-detached units show virtually no correlation with national totals (r=-0.008), indicating they move independently.
• Apartment and other unit types are nearly perfectly correlated with the Multiples category (r=0.997), confirming these two classifications capture essentially the same construction trend.
• The dataset is heavily right-skewed: the median housing starts value across all regions is just 2,374 units versus a mean of 10,631 units, reflecting that a small number of large urban markets — particularly in Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia — dominate national activity.
• The lowest national housing starts on record occurred in April 1996 at 84,894 units, marking the trough of mid-1990s economic stagnation, compared to the 2022 peak — a roughly 3x increase over that period.
• 361 extreme regional outliers (|z-score| > 3) were identified across provinces and census metropolitan areas, concentrated around the early 1990s construction peak and post-2020 COVID-era volatility, while no outliers were detected at the national aggregate level.
• Row units and Semi-detached units represent the smallest housing segments, with historical averages of 3,279 and 1,892 units respectively, and relatively tight distributions compared to the high variability seen in Multiples (mean: 17,521 units, highest standard deviation among unit types).