Canadian Housing Starts Unexpectedly Jump to Most Since 2017

Canadian housing starts hit a two-year high on increases in multi-family dwellings in cities such as Toronto and Vancouver.

Builders started work on an annualized 245,604 units in July, up 16% from 212,095 a month earlier, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said Tuesday in Ottawa. That’s the most since November 2017, and significantly higher than the 205,000 median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists.