Edmonton region housing starts fall 6% in 2011

Houses at Mosaic Ridge in the early morning light in Edmonton.

EDMONTON - A modest jump in activity last month capped a slight decrease in the year for Edmonton housing starts, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said Tuesday.

Total starts in the capital and surrounding suburbs numbered 691 for the last month of 2011, up from 558 in December 2010. But the calendar year 2011 saw a six per cent decrease in total starts in the Edmonton area, from 9,959 units in 2010 to 9,332 units in 2011.

Richard Goatcher, CMHC’s senior market analyst for Edmonton, linked the modest decline to existing housing levels.

“Adequate new and resale inventories constrained new single-detached production throughout much of 2011,” he said. Single-detached starts accounted for more than half of all starts in Edmonton in 2010 and 2011.

Calgary recorded a small year-over-year increase in starts, according to CMHC. Total housing starts in 2011 came in at 9,292 units, 30 more than 2010. Canmore, Grande Prairie and Wetaskiwin saw growth in total housing starts for 2011, while Medicine Hat, Camrose and Red Deer’s numbers declined.

December 2011 also came in with 47 per cent more total starts across Alberta’s seven largest population centres than the same month in 2010, led by a 91 per cent increase in multi-family starts.

Multi-family housing projects often lend themselves to volatile monthly statistics due to the large numbers of units involved in a single project. Still, Goatcher noted that multi-family starts rose 11 per cent from 2010 to 2011.

“Multi-family production in 2011 represented the best performance for the industry since 2007.”