Wednesday, January 09, 2013

November 2012 CMHC Data - Vancouver CMA

Here is the chart for housing starts, completions, and under construction for Vancouver Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) to November 2012 with December 2012 preliminary housing starts:


Below we can see a continued high level of multi-unit construction compared to detached construction. The long-term trend for detached construction is down.
The last three years have seen an increasing amount of starts and under construction volume, the former of which now looks to have crested. Completions are trending upwards, as expected -- completions typically lag starts, so if starts are trending higher that will likely mean completions will trend higher as well. 12 months of completions are now 30% above the trough in 2011. (The actual trough was in early 2011.) With this increased level of completions, and what looks like either a plateaued or further-increasing level of completions into next year, we can expect increased competition among sellers in 2013 compared to 2012. 

On the unit absorption front here is completed and unabsorbed for single and semi detached dwellings. When I track down the dataset for multi I'll put together a graph on it. There is an enigma in some of my data, indicating that unabsorbed inventory may be under-reported. I'll have more on this in the coming weeks.


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