The value of residential building permits in Vancouver soared 51 per cent year-over-year in July, according to Statistics Canada data released September 9.
The city’s $775 million total value of permits was also a leap of 55.1 per cent compared with June’s figures.
More than $536 million of the city’s total residential permit value in July was in multi-family buildings (a 77 per cent year-over-year rise), with $157 million being spent on single-family homes and $52 million on townhomes.
This is largely in line with the CMHC’s latest housing starts figures for Metro Vancouver, released today, which found July’s housing starts largely driven by multi-family housing construction.
Residential permits across the province were up 37.9 per cent year over year to $1.03 billion, a 36.9 per cent rise from June.
In other provincial centres surveyed, Victoria also saw its building permit values soar in July, rising 151.3 per cent year over year to $72 million, which was also an increase of 64.3 per cent compared with June’s figures.
Abbotsford-Mission also recovered dramatically after a weaker June, seeing a year-over-year rise of 52.2 per cent to total $19 million in building permit values, an 87.4 per cent rise compared with the previous month.
The value of Kelowna building permits in July totalled $30 million, a jump of 41.3 per cent year over year and 30.4 per cent month over month.
Across Canada, the total value of residential permits was $4.9 billion, a 6.6 per cent increase over the month before and a 2.4 per cent rise year over year. Unlike in Vancouver, $2.5 billion of that dollar figure was invested in single-family home construction, and just $1.6 billion in condo-apartment construction.
Vancouver’s $536 million worth of multi-family permits in July totalled a third of the value of entire country’s condo-apartment permits for that month.
To read the full Statistics Canada report and interactive charts, click here.
