When presenting housing starts for the U.S. and Canada, the Census Bureau and CMHC first seasonally adjust monthly ‘actual’ units and then annualize them, to arrive at what are termed SAAR (seasonally adjusted and annualized) figures. ‘Annualizing’ takes the monthly number and projects it out over 12 months.
The January-April average of the four monthly SAAR figures for the U.S. so far this year is 1.594 million units, +18.2% when compared with January-April 2020’s average. Since the Fall of last year, a mini new housing construction boom has been underway in America.
Canada’s January-April average of monthly SAAR starts has been 295,700 units, +50.5% versus the comparable average managed in the first four months of last year. In Canada, the boom in residential groundbreakings isn’t speaking tentatively, rather it’s shouting.
Graph 1
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