The release of the latest housing starts report shows that even if things have slowed down in Estevan, they certainly haven’t stopped.
The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation released their figures on housing starts around Saskatchewan, and while Estevan has seen this activity slow down compared with the third quarter of 2013, the year-to-date numbers show a big increase.
Compared with last year’s third quarter, Estevan saw a slight increase in single unit housing starts up to 25 from 21, but the multiple-unit housing starts dropped to 12 in the third quarter of 2014, down from 45 in the same period last year.
That may show the most up to date snapshot of the activity in the Energy City, but over the course of 2014, the housing starts in Estevan show a healthy increase from one year earlier.
Through 2014, housing starts have totaled 128, with 49 single units and 79 multi-family units. That marks a 31.9 per cent increase in housing starts from 2013’s total of 97.
While those numbers are up in Estevan, they also show Estevan continues to punch above its weight compared with other cities of comparable size across Saskatchewan.
The figures from the market analysis centre of the CMHC show Weyburn has 75 total housing starts so far in 2014, while Yorkton has only 35. North Battleford has 107, and Swift Current has 131, three more housing starts than Estevan.
The slightly larger cities of Moose Jaw and Prince Albert had housing starts of 178 and 214, respectively.
“The trend in total housing starts moved higher in September, supported by an elevated pace of multi-family construction in recent months,” said Goodson Mwale, CMHC’s senior market analyst for Saskatchewan, in a press release issued last week. “Declining inventory of complete and unabsorbed units in the multi-family sector has supported a faster pace of starts this year, particularly among condominium apartments.”
