According to Statistics Canada, investment in residential construction totaled $35.8 billion in the third quarter, up 9.1 percent compared with the same period in 2016 and the largest increase since the fourth quarter of 2012.
All components contributed to the year-over-year increase, led by spending on renovation, up 8.1 percent to $15.5 billion, followed by construction of single-family homes, up 11.0 percent to $8.4 billion.
Renovations drove the increases in every province except Alberta and Prince Edward Island, where spending was led by investment in new single houses. The $495.2 million increase in Alberta was mainly due to single-home construction (+$396.8 million), which accounted for 80.1 percent of the total year-over-year increase in the province.
At the national level, investment in row house construction reached a record high of $1.6 billion. In the third quarter, row houses represented over half of the total year-over-year increase for multi-unit building construction, despite accounting for just over one-fifth of total spending for multi-unit buildings.