Pace of Canadian housing starts up in March on seasonally adjusted basis: CMHC

OTTAWA — Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says the pace of housing starts picked up in March.

The national housing agency says the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts climbed to 192,527 units in March, compared with 166,290 units in February.

Economists on average had expected an annual pace of 196,500, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon.

The reading came as starts of urban multiple-unit projects such as condominiums, apartments and townhouses increased 18.6 per cent to 135,894 units in March. The rate of single-detached urban starts rose 12.1 per cent to 42,139 units.

Rural starts were estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 14,494 units.

The six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts was 202,279 in March compared with 202,039 in February.

Affordability remains a major issue despite real estate cool down: poll

A cooling off in the local real estate market is making it at least a little easier for people to take the plunge.

A new poll from RBC suggests many first-timers — more than 50 per cent — are getting mortgages now as they worry interest rates will go up if they wait.

That’s despite more than four in 10 Canadians who have recently made a real estate purchase admitting to being “house poor” or being over extended, spending a large proportion of their income on maintaining the payments on the property.

Almost all of those experiencing a house poor scenario have said it led to a lot of mental stress.

To get around the affordability crunch, those getting into the market appear to be taking more non-traditional buying routes, including getting more help from family to come up with the cash.