Vancouver home building permits issued in August were valued at a total of $479.5 million, a rise of 26 per cent compared with last August, according to Statistics Canada data released October 7.
However, this value represented a drop of of 38.1 per cent compared with July’s hot figures. This was described by Statistics Canada as a “lower construction intentions” – but could also be attributed to a summer slowdown in permit-granting processes.
Condo-apartment construction increased its lead over single-family units, with more than $272 million of the city’s total residential permit value in August invested in multi-family buildings (a 39.7 per cent year-over-year rise). This compares with $150 million being spent on single-family homes and $51 million on townhome construction.
This is largely in line with the CMHC’s latest housing starts figures for Metro Vancouver, which found August’s housing starts largely driven by multi-family housing construction.
Residential permits across the province were up 23 per cent year over year to $726 million, a 29.9 per cent decline from July.
In other provincial centres surveyed, Victoria also saw building permit values leap 44.1 per cent year over year to $41.4 million, although this total was a fall of 44.4 per cent compared with July’s figures.
Abbotsford-Mission is having a banner construction year and was the metropolitan area to see the biggest changes in residential permit values in August, more than tripling over the same time last year. The region saw a year-over-year rise of 207.8 per cent to total $13.6 million in building permit values, compared with $4.4 million last August, albeit a 30.2 per cent decline compared with July.
It was almost the reverse story in Kelowna, where the total value of August building permits totalled $29.3 million, a drop of 3.1 per cent year over year but a modest fall of only 2.2 per cent compared with July.
Across Canada, the total value of residential permits was $4.08 billion, a 16.8 per cent decrease over the month before and a 13.9 per cent rise year over year. Unlike previous months, condo-apartment construction seems to be starting to catch up with single-family homes across the country – $1.98 billion of that dollar figure was invested in single-family home construction, compared with $1.55 billion in condo-apartment construction.
Unlike last month, when Vancouver’s multi-family permits in July totalled a third of the value of entire country’s condo-apartment permits, in August the city’s $272 million multi-family permit value comprised less than a fifth of the nationwide figure.
To read the full Statistics Canada report and interactive charts, click here.
