Canada’s housing pipeline: one headline, several different stories.

Canada’s six-month housing-starts trend reached 250,411 units in September 2026, a 0.6% increase, according to CMHC’s October 16 release. The trend is a moving average of seasonally adjusted annual rates, rather than a count of homes built during the month.

The standalone September annualized rate was 248,896 units, up 3% from August. Actual starts in centres with at least 10,000 residents were 19,984, down 11% from September 2025. Those figures cover different measures and geographies; they should not be placed side by side as if they count the same thing.

The city-level trend also varied. CMHC reported an 8% monthly decline in Montréal’s six-month trend, a 6% increase in Vancouver and a flat trend in Toronto. Multi-unit activity influenced those differences.

For readers, the useful question is where construction is moving—and what kind of housing it represents. A start signals construction progress, not a completed home available to occupy. Local delivery schedules still matter.

This is a dated market brief, based on the September 2026 reference period. The linked CMHC tables may contain later releases or revisions.