Construction activity continues at blistering pace
Residential construction activity in Penticton cooled down just slightly last year, according to new data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
The agency recorded 470 housing starts in the city in 2018, compared to 479 in 2017.
Apartments accounted for 263 of those starts, followed by 102 singlefamily homes, 55 row homes and 50 semi-detached homes.
More notably, the number of housing completions recorded by CMHC spiked from 296 in 2017 to 452 last year.
City officials don’t believe the pace will let up much in 2019.
“We expect activity to be steady,” development services director Anthony Haddad said in an email.
“We expect a slowdown of sorts but based on planning approvals for projects from 2018 that are in place, and anticipation in early 2019, strong building permit activity on the housing front is expected to continue for 2019.”
Haddad also noted that 2018 was a record year for issuance of permits for single-family homes with 98 approvals, versus the previous high mark of 93 set in 2017.
All told, the city last year issued permits for work valued at $145.1 million, down from $197.9 million in 2017 — which was just $56,000 off the record set in 2016.
The earlier periods were buoyed by permits for the Penticton Regional Hospital expansion.
However, the 2018 total was inflated by the near doubling of multi-family permits to $48.2 million from $25.5 million a year earlier.