Fraser Valley up 71 per cent over last year
Ashley Ford
Province
Construction of new homes like these in Surrey continues to boom. Photograph by : Ric Ernst, The Province
Another month and another blazing housing-start performance across the Lower Mainland.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.’s latest numbers show Fraser Valley starts jumping an astonishing 71 per cent from March a year ago to 833 starts from 485.
Vancouver‘s performance was also impressive with a 30-per-cent increase over a year ago to 2,016 units.
The performance from all urban areas in B.C. was also impressive with starts increasing 27 per cent to 7,934 units.
“Despite a limited supply of land and skilled trades, home builders are managing to increase production,” said Cameron Muir, senior market analyst for CMHC in Vancouver. “Growth in the overall stock of housing is crucial to affordability,” he said.
“We are running ahead of where we expected to be at this time of the year. It’s not really surprising given the obvious demand of first-time homebuyers in the Greater Vancouver area,” said Peter Simpson, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders Association.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if CMHC now adjusts its housing starts forecast up slightly from their 18,500 for the year for Greater Vancouver,” he said.
Last year, there were 18,820 starts and in 2004 it was the best performance in a decade at 19,435. “If we keep up this pace, we might beat that 2004 mark.”
The rest of Canada also showed no sign of cooling last month and in fact set a construction pace not seen in 18 years. Housing starts rose to 252,300 units in March, up from 242,500 in February, marking the strongest March on record since 1987.
“With today’s data, it goes without saying that there is still not a shred of evidence that Canada’s housing market is tapering off,” said Marc Levesque, chief fixed-income strategist at TD Securities.
© The Vancouver Province 2006