Construction on new homes in the City of Grande Prairie last year was the second lowest level in a decade. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation pegs 2017’s housing starts at a total of 194, with 2016 the only year with less new builds since 2007 at 167.
New single family home builds were up year-over-year, from 108 to 146, but multi-family homes were down by nearly two-thirds from 126 to 48. Market Analyst Tim Gensey says a low demand for new multi-unit buildings was expected, as the city ended 2016 with a rental vacancy rate of 19.8 per cent.
“Builders responded to not really high demand on either side; they curtailed the multi-family building. The demand for single detached homes was a bit stronger, so the demand came up a bit there.”
The vacancy rate dropped back down to 4.9 per cent in October 2017.
At the same time, the resale market has improved. Gensey says MLS sales were up 27 per cent over 2016, with around 2,120 homes switching hands last year. He expects those will move to more “normal” levels of 2,200 to 2,500 sales as the economy continues to pick up.
“One thing that we did notice is that there still remains a lot of active listings on the MLS. As that starts to get absorbed, don’t expect prices to move up; they’ll probably stay around where they are for the time being.”
As for housing starts, it’s more typical to see construction begin on upwards of 200 single-family detached homes in a year. However, Gensey notes Grande Prairie sees its levels fluctuate regularly.
In the County of Grande Prairie, housing starts nearly doubled in the fourth quarter of 2017, bringing the year almost in line with 2016. There were a total of 211 housing starts last year, down just slightly from the year before.
Like the city, single family home starts were up from 126 to 175, while multi-family starts were down from 94 to 26. Construction started on 39 single and 22 multiple family houses between October and December 2017.