Metro Vancouver boasting the most housing starts in 30 years.Vancouver Sun
Monday, December 10, 2007
VANCOUVER - Builders in Metro Vancouver started hammering up more homes in November than in any month in the last 30 years, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported Monday.
However, more and more of those homes are condominiums and townhouses. Up to the end of November, the growth in housing starts was driven by a 30-per-cent surge in multi-family-housing construction. "Construction of single-family homes has declined in all communities except North Vancouver, where infill building has this district bucking the trend," Robyn Adamache, a market analyst with CMHC said in a news release.
Builders started work on 2,704 homes in Metro Vancouver in November, compared with 1,405 in the same month a year ago. For the first 11 months, Metro Vancouver contractors started on 19,491 units, and only 3,826 of them single-family homes. In the first 11 months of 2006, builders had started on 17,398 new homes, with 5,386 of them single-family homes.
Peter Simpson, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders' Association said the results to date already make 2007 the most active year for residential construction in more than a decade. Province-wide, November housing starts reached 3,718 in November. Nationally, the pace of new-housing construction reached an seasonally adjusted average of 227,900 units for the year.
"Housing starts remained strong in November and are consistent with our new-home construction forecast for 2007," Bob Dugan, CMHC's chief economist. However, unlike Vancouver, Dugan said housing strength in the rest of Canada "is attributable to the good performance of single-detached home starts, which reached their highest level since March, 2006."
