Victoria builders take a breather

December 27, 2019

After two years of rapid construction, Victoria home builders took a breather in 2019.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) reports that the city’s housing starts from January to November 2019 dropped by 7 per compared to the same period in 2018.
Single-family detached starts fell the most with a 23 per cent deceleration.
Meanwhile, Statistics Canada numbers indicate the value of building permits issued across the Victoria census metropolitan area fell by almost 40 per cent in October 2019 and ended up at $68.7 million—a decline greater than all of British Columbia at 21.2 per cent and all of Canada at 1.5 per cent.
However, CMHC senior analyst Braden Batch said that these figures should be viewed in light of the fact that 2017 and 2018 were “record-setting years” in terms of starts. He said the 3,242 starts in the first 11 months of 2019 were relatively high for the region.
The benchmark price of a condo unit in Victoria grew by 3.1 per cent year-over-year to $517,000 in November. Meanwhile, the average single-detached price fell by 1.2 per cent to $855,400. Overall housing sales through the Victoria Real Estate Board were up by nearly 16 per cent in November 2019 from a year earlier.