Housing starts up on warm weather
Mild January led to rebound across the Toronto area
Excerpt from an article by Tony Wong - Toronto Star
Like many Toronto-area developers, Brian Johnston took advantage of an unseasonably warm January to start building.
“It was very unusual to have our guys out there digging trenches and laying sewers,” said Johnston, the president of Monarch Development Corp., one of Canada’s largest and oldest home builders.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported yesterday that starts across the Toronto area were up by 19% in January to a seasonally adjusted and annualized 39,700, compared to 33,400 in December.
It was a similar situation Canada-wide, as starts jumped a much higher than expected 17% to 249,300, the highest since August 2004.
“Unseasonably warm weather through much of January, still-low mortgage rates, solid job and income growth and a high level of consumer confidence all played a part in keeping the nation’s construction sites humming,” economist Bart Melek at BMO Nesbitt Burns wrote.
Yesterday’s strong numbers capped a golden week of upbeat figures for the Canadian housing industry.
On Tuesday the Toronto Real Estate Board credited the weather for helping the existing home-sales market get off to a record start in January, while Statistics Canada said in a separate release that building permits hit a record high nationally in 2006.
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