Housing starts continued to trend lower in July. Foundations were poured for 517 new homes, down 73 per cent from July 2008. The majority of new housing projects were in Surrey and Vancouver City, and these were mostly single detached homes.
During the first seven months of the year, a total of 3,859 homes were started in the Vancouver census metropolitan area (CMA) compared to some 12,082 units for the same period last year.
Single-detached home starts have been trending up since the beginning of the year, and accounted for almost half of the new developments in July. Multiple-family units normally accounted for the larger share of total housing starts inVancouver.
Multiple-unit projects, on the other hand, continued to retreat. Developers have been taking a wait and see approach towards the multi-unit market even though the number of units absorbed has begun to trend upward and narrow the gap vis-à-vis last year's figures. There are still numerous projects under construction and a sound inventory of unsold new homes available. Homebuilding will remain modest until more of the inventory of new and existing homes is sold off.
Here is the data:
There were 517 housing starts. 236 of those starts were single family homes. 96 of those were in Surrey. Single family homes are simple and quick to permit, construct, and sell if need be.
There are still 19,292 housing units under construction in the Vancouver CMA. 13,754 are condominiums. There are 4,912 units under construction in the City of Vancouver and 3,007 in the City of Surrey.
There were 925 completions during July. 367 were townhouses. There were 222 completions in the City of Surrey.
The number of completed but unabsorbed units has been rising and is at 2,350. 726 of those are in Surrey and 307 of those are single family homes.
1 comment:
The direction of under construction is in no doubt. Reconciling this data with the government's unemployment forecasts presented in its budget is left as an exercise to the reader.
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