Construction is going strong in Metro Vancouver, even though home resale prices are dropping slightly and sales activity is significantly below historical levels.
Metro Vancouver housing starts in were on pace in September to reach 20,000 units by year's end, mostly driven by multi-family developments, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported Tuesday.
There were 293 single-detached housing starts and 1,423 multi-family housing starts in September 2012 - numbers similar to last year's. Year-to-date, total starts have reached 14,828 units, compared to 13,260 for the same time period last year, CMHC reported.
"Full-time employment gains have supported housing demand so far in 2012," said Robyn Adamache, CMHC's senior market analyst for Vancouver.
September's benchmark price for residential properties in Metro Vancouver fell 0.8 per cent to $606,000 compared to last year, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. But Scott Brown, senior vice-president of residential project marketing at Colliers International, said values for new home sales are not dropping.
The Fraser Valley real estate market has been more stable than the market in the western part of the Lower Mainland, in communities like Vancouver's west side, Richmond or West Vancouver, where prices went up dramatically in 2011 and for now, are still holding steady.
"In the west-side market, there's very little price movement downward, but there's also very little transaction movement as people wait to see who's going to move first," Brown said. "The Fraser Valley never ever did recover to those peak values; instead, it's been steady-eddy growth. It keeps plodding along, being a generally healthy market without the big news flashes and without the big crashes."
