Homebuilding heats up in January
40 UNITS STARTED, DOUBLE LAST YEAR’S TOTAL
Too cold for you? It’s not too chilly for Lethbridge homebuilders, apparently.
Contractors started 40 new homes here last month — double last year’s number.
Lethbridge region continues to lead Alberta’s other mid-sized cities, according to reports from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. But reflecting the economic upturn, both Calgary and Edmonton are showing strong growth as well.
Weather notwithstanding, local builders started work on 28 singlefamily homes in January — up from 18 a year ago — and 12 multi-family units, a gain of 10. The CMHC report shows 35 of those 40 were in the city.
Medicine Hat showed a modest gain as well, with a total of eight starts compared with five a year earlier. But Red Deer slipped from 19 to 16, while Grande Prairie recorded just one housing start.
In Fort McMurray, with many of the homes lost in the 2016 fire now replaced, the pace has slowed somewhat. After posting 108 housing starts in January 2017, the northern city saw 93 begun last month.
But there was no slowdown in the province’s largest cities. In metropolitan Calgary, 325 singlefamily home and 326 multi-family units were launched, for a total of 651 starts. That compared with 426 a year ago.
And Edmonton-area builders have been busier still. With 298 singles and 421 multiples, they started work on 719 new homes during January — quite a jump from 448 one year earlier.
In a related report, the CMHC is predicting somewhere between 614 and 873 new housing units will be started in Lethbridge and region this year.
The lower figure is the agency’s current “seasonally adjusted annual rate,” while the higher number refects the local construction “trend.” Both are based on the premise that the current pace of homebuilding will continue throughout the year.