March 2012 CMHC Data - Vancouver CMA

Here are mohican/VHB's charts for housing starts, completions, and under construction for Vancouver Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). Note starts include April 2012 preliminary data.

The last few months have seen a continued dearth of completions and an increasing amount of starts and under construction volume. That said, the level of starts in April was nothing significant, only about 1300.  Completions, as expected, are trending upwards, the recent uptick a product of very low completions in March 2011 dropping off the end of the 12-month moving-average filter. As 2012 progresses we should anticipate an eventual increase in completions, though it may not show up until the later months of the year given the high mix of multi-unit construction that tend to have longer build times.

Here is a breakdown of the new persons per bedroom start and completion, assuming 4 bedrooms per detached and 1.6 bedrooms per multi. The higher the number the more population growth there is per start/completion and this would tend to lead to higher unit absorption. In contrast a lower value would mean less absorption. As we can see Vancouver new persons per bedroom-start is trending lower once again.

Below we can see a continued high level of multi-unit construction compared to detached construction.