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Vancouver housing construction

A Record 37,000 Homes Under Construction in Vancouver

Steve Saretsky -

Housing Starts Slow Across Greater Vancouver as Developers Fail to Keep up With Construction

Recent data suggests housing starts are falling midway through 2017. From January through May, new housing starts fell from 10,860 in 2016 to just 9104 in 2017. That’s good for a 16% drop year over year.

This is hardly surprising as trying to match our record housing starts in 2015 and 2016 would be hard to do. This historical housing boom has left an avalanche of new supply in the pipeline. There are currently a whopping 37,009 units under construction in Greater Vancouver. That’s up nearly 26% year over year. This graph highlights just how unprecedented the numbers are.

Vancouver housing under construction
Source: @YVRHousing

It seems developers are struggling to keep up as projects are continuously being delayed. Such as Kensington Gardens which is experiencing a flood of assignments. Either that or they don’t want an avalanche of new supply hitting the market at the same time. As we can see below, the completion rate has never been lower.

Vancouver new construction completion rate
Completion rate for Vancouver new construction

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The Canadian Economy

Steve Saretsky -

Happy Monday Morning! We got a string of new data this past week confirming inflation in consumer goods, and housing are proving to be more than transitory. Canada’s consumer price index continued to drift higher with prices hitting an 18 year high, up 4.7% from last October. The recent floods in BC...

Steve Saretsky -

The calls for impending interest rate hikes continues. CIBC’s chief economist, Benjamin Tal, was out recently suggesting the Bank of Canada could hike its benchmark interest rate at least six times beginning in early 2022. “I think there is a risk of getting into the market at today’s rates,” noted Tal....

Steve Saretsky -

The BC Government announced it is looking at several cooling measures for the housing market in 2022. They have highlighted two measures. The first is an end to the blind bidding process, and the other is a mandatory “cooling off period” which will allow any buyer a 7 day recession...

Steve Saretsky -

The Bank of Canada continues to slowly drain liquidity after flooding the system with a firehose of cash during the pandemic. Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem announced the end of Canada’s QE program (also known as money printing). Furthermore, in Macklems words, “We expect to begin increasing our policy...

Steve Saretsky -

Consumer price inflation ripped higher in September, surging 4.4% year-over-year, the fastest pace of price increases in 18 years. Let’s discuss this further. We have an inflation problem and the Bank of Canada remains of the view that inflation will be transitory. Although they really can’t say otherwise, for if...

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The Saretsky Report. December 2022