Rosenberg Research Notes Surprising Strength in Canadian Housing Starts, Sales Despite Neutral Policy Rate

12:35 PM EDT, 06/16/2025 (MT Newswires) -- There were a few signs of life in Canada's housing sector on Monday, with housing starts coming in hot at 280,000 annualized units, which was above expectations of 248,000 and the six-month moving average of 243,000, said Rosenberg Research.

This is basically flat, or 0.2% lower, from April's print and it means that housing starts are actually still up 20.7% year-to-date. This is a surprisingly strong result for back-to-back months, despite the Bank of Canada's rate policy remaining around neutral, noted Rosenberg Research.

Sales data were also mostly positive for the sector. Sales of existing residential homes rose 3.6% month over month, the strongest single-month performance since October 2024 -- although they are still down 0.5% year over year. New residential listings were up 3.2% month over month and are up 10.8% year over year. The sales-to-new-listings ratio rose a tiny amount to 47%, but that is still the third-lowest level since 2009.

Canada isn't seeing the bottom fall out of either construction or housing demand in Canada. Berenberg still thinks that Governor Tiff Macklem has a lot more work to do, but this data and other recent prints might be strong enough to get the Bank of Canada to pause at its next meeting in late July.

Berenberg still estimates two to three more rate cuts this year, but the timing remains up in the air.

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