Housing starts in the U.S. and Canada plunged during the several months of late winter and early spring of last year, when the coronavirus arrived in North America as an almost entirely unknown but frightening force. At the time, employment suffered a huge hit and there was an expectation by most analysts that new homebuilding activity would be suspended for a long spell.

Such dire speculation prove to be unfounded, however, partly thanks to some of the advances in high-tech that are always being talked about.

In-person home visits slammed to a stop, but real estate sales scampered to the Internet. Viewing properties remotely was a trend already underway, but it received an accelerated boost, and the usual give and take of contract negotiations switched seamlessly to digital means.

Once 2020’s summer season was underway, monthly housing starts (seasonally adjusted and annualized/SAAR) returned to normal levels and, in some months through to the end of the year, tested upper bounds.

2020 U.S. total starts (in units), as an average of the monthly SAAR figures, were +7.9% compared with 2019. Canadian total starts were +5.1%.

By the end of 2020, U.S. single-family groundbreakings were firmly in the ascendancy. They finished the year +12.3% relative to 2019.

Multiple-unit starts, though, were fading. Compared with their nation-wide level in 2019, U.S. ‘multis’ in 2020 were -1.9%.

In the latest figures presented by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), single-family starts in Canada’s 35 most populous urban areas were +8% in 2020 while multiples were +3%.