Housing construction starts blew past expectations in April, according to data released Tuesday.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said there was a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 244,900 housing starts last month. That was up 14% from the previous month, and well ahead of the figure of 204,000 that economists polled by Bloomberg had been predicting.
Urban starts were up 18% to an annual rate of 226,200, while the estimate on rural starts were down 19% to 18,700.
Construction on multiple-housing units in urban areas drove the overall gains. They were up 27.4% to a rate of 158,500. Urban singles saw a gain of 0.6% to 67,700.
Regionally, there was a surge of 56.5% in urban housing starts in Quebec. They were up 12.2% in Ontario, 6.3% in the Prairies and British Columbia, and 2.6% in Atlantic Canada.
