Housing starts in Ottawa up year-over-year despite slow September: CMHC

Construction workers are seen at the site of an affordable housing project in the Thornecliffe Park region of Ottawa, on Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023. (Spencer Colby/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) says the number of housing starts in Ottawa continues to trend above last year’s numbers, but the rate has slowed since the summer.

New figures published Thursday show there were 7,168 housing starts in the capital between January and September of 2025, a 22 per cent increase over the same period in 2024.

September was, however, a slow month for housing starts, with 474 new homes in the capital, a significant drop compared to September 2024, which saw 1,510 starts.

Gatineau continues its year-over-year decline, with 1,784 starts in the first nine months of 2025, a 24 per cent drop from 2024 figures. Gatineau saw just 62 housing starts in September.

Kingston is seeing a boom with its number of starts up 169 per cent in the first nine months of the year compared with 2024. There were 861 total housing starts between January and September in Kingston, up from 320 the year prior; however, there were only five starts in September.

Nationally, the CMHC reported a 4.1 per cent overall increase in housing starts in September, driven largely by higher starts in Montreal and Toronto. According to the CMHC, Montreal and Toronto posted 135 per cent and 112 per cent year-over-year increases in actual housing starts respectively.

“The six-month trend in housing starts was pushed higher in September, driven by significantly higher monthly starts in Ontario, Québec, and the Prairie provinces. Notably, Montréal and Toronto were responsible for more than a quarter of the total monthly starts nationally, primarily due to increased rental apartments starts,” CHMC Deputy Chief Economist Tania Bourassa-Ochoa said in a news release. “While these results indicate some resilience, it is worth noting that current housing starts levels are generally reflective of decisions made months or even years ago when investor confidence was higher than it is today.”

The seasonally adjusted at annual rate of housing starts for Ottawa in September 2025 was 5,494 units, up 30 per cent from August.

The CMHC defines the seasonally adjusted at annual rate as the result of adjusting monthly or quarterly statistics to provide an indication of the annual total which would be achieved if activity in all other months or quarters were at the same level of performance relative to past seasonal patterns.

Kingston’s seasonally adjusted annual rate in September was 52, down 77 per cent from August. Gatineau’s rate was 719, down 59 per cent from the previous month.

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