Vancouver Housing Starts Drop

Metro Vancouver housing starts showed another substantial drop in April leaving new-home construction at about one-third the level it was a year ago, according to figures from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

Builders started work on 483 new homes across Metro Vancouver in April, almost 70 per cent fewer than April, 2008.

To the end of April they'd started 2,302 new housing units, some 66 per cent fewer than the first four months of last year.

Starts were down in every municipality except Delta, which has seen construction start on 93 new homes up to the end of April, a 75-per-cent increase from a year ago.

"New home construction is facing competition from a well-supplied resale market and a growing inventory of unsold new homes," Robyn Adamache, a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. analyst said in a news release.

"Builders will remain on the sidelines until some of the existing new and resale supply is absorbed."

Construction across B.C.'s urban areas remained depressed in April with builders starting only 842 new homes during the month, down 73 per cent from the 3,092 started in the same month a year ago.

Once booming Kelowna saw the steepest decline with only 29 new starts in April, down 88 per cent from the 249 started in the same month a year ago.

In Victoria, starts were down 87 per cent at 54 units, and in Chilliwack starts were down 87 per cent at 21 new units.

Vernon was the only urban area to see an increase in starts with 64 new units reprsenting a 16 per cent increase from a year ago.

Overall, however, builders started work on just 3,363 new homes to the end of April compared with 11,385 in the first four months of last year.