Housing starts up this year in Okanagan but down in Kamloops
At a time when the market for used homes has softened, the pace of construction for new housing units has increased in the Okanagan.
The same cannot be said for Kamloops where there have been 148 housing starts to the end of July. That’s a 55.4% drop from the 332 starts in the first seven months of 2021, according to data released Aug. 25, by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
Kelowna is the powerhouse in the Thompson-Okanagan region, accounting for 59.4% of the 2,351 housing starts in nine communities covered in the database.
For Kelowna, that’s an increase of 23.2% over the 1,133 starts in 2021.
Vernon, with 301 starts, and Penticton, with 260, both had more starts than Kamloops this year and West Kelowna was just behind at 140 starts.
All the other communities in the database had fewer than 50 starts.
The pattern in the Okanagan is opposite to what happened in B.C. and the rest of Canada.
Housing starts were down 13.5% in B.C. for the first seven months compared to 2021 with 23,542 starts.
There was a 4.8% drop in starts for Canada as a whole to 134,684.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation defines a housing start as “the stage when the concrete has been poured for the whole of the footing around the structure or an equivalent stage where a basement will not be part of the structure.”
READ MORE: Loss of out-of-town buyers bringing Kelowna house sales to near record lows
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