Posted on January 13, 2011
Housing starts in New Brunswick fell in December compared to the same period a year earlier, according to a senior market analyst with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
On Monday, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) released its preliminary housing starts numbers for the month of December for New Brunswick. According to organization, preliminary data shows a total of 149 starts were recorded in December 2010, compared to 182 starts for the same period a year earlier.
The province also saw a 15 per cent decline in multiple starts - which include apartment buildings and townhouses - in areas outside the urban centres in December 2010 when compared to the same period in 2009.
However, provincial urban centres saw a 29 per cent year-over-year increase of multiple starts. In addition, housing starts across the province's urban centres were up by 13 per cent in 2010 compared to the previous year, said Claude Gautreau, a Moncton-based market analyst with CMHC.
"I would always caution people, especially when you get into the month of December, to not read too much into one month's worth of data," said Gautreau. Once the winter months set in, said Gautreau, housing starts numbers can be effected factors such as weather-induced delays.
The year-over-year increase of multiple starts in urban centres may have been driven by young people migrating to urban centres who would rather rent a home than buy one.
"In a lot of cases, multiple starts are driven by migration," said Gautreau. However, if vacancy rates rise, New Brunswick could expect to see a decline in multiple starts in 2011, he said.
The December data may indicate a possible slight slowdown for Atlantic Canada, but 2010 was a good year overall for residential housing starts in the region, said Alex MacDonald, a regional economist with CMHC.
"On a year-over-year basis, it turned out to be a fairly good year," said MacDonald. He noted that real preliminary housing starts in Atlantic Canada were up by 14 per cent in 2010 over 2009. The growth that New Brunswick saw in 2010, said MacDonald, was primarily driven by activity in Moncton.
MacDonald also said the growth of housing starts on a year-to-year basis for the Atlantic region is due to confident builders taking advantage of low interest and high vacancy rates.
However, he noted builders may be looking to lock in projects now, as the improving economies of western Canada may eventually lure trades people out of the Atlantic region.
While MacDonald said most Atlantic provinces posted year-to-year gains for housing starts, declines were still seen in the month of December. St. John's saw a decline in housing starts in December 2010 compared to the same month the previous year, and Halifax saw no change. Prince Edward Island saw an increase in housing starts in December over the same period of the previous year.
The seasonally-adjusted annual rate of housing starts nationally sat at 171,500 units in December 2010, which is down from 198,200 units in November. The seasonally-adjusted annual rate of urban starts for Atlantic Canada decreased by 9.8 per cent in December. The actual housing starts for 2010 nationally will be released in the January edition of Monthly Housing Statistics from CMHC.