With one month left to go, another record has been chalked up in the booming housing sector.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) said there were 641 housing starts in November in the London census area which includes St. Thomas and Strathroy.
That pushes the number of housing starts for 2017 to 3,765 units, beating the old record of 3,674 set back in 2006.
It’s the second housing record to fall in November. The resale home market hit a total of 10,790 homes surpassing the old mark of 10,193 properties set last year.
CMHC analyst Amran Wali said the double record is not surprising since there is a linkage between the new home and resale market
“Strong population growth and a low supply of resale home listings have strengthened demand for new single-detached homes,” said Wali.
Wali noted that the dwindling apartment vacancy rate, which hit a 16-year low of 1.8 per cent this fall is also driving demand for apartment construction.
That was the case in November with 480 multi-unit starts including, two semis, 84 townhouses and 392 apartment units.
Recent high-rise building starts include a 142 unit, 16-story building on Fanshawe Park Road West and Tricar Group’s 24-storey, 245 unit building on York Street.
Townhouses have become increasingly popular with 713 starts this year compared to just 370 in the first 11 months of 2016.
The market for single-detached homes has been consistently strong this year with 163 starts in November compared to 141 in the same month last year. So far this year there have been 1,690 starts compared to 1,313 last year.
The housing market was also strong across Canada and in the province of Ontario in November.
The CMHC said the pace of housing starts picked up in November, pushing the six-month trend to the highest level in nearly a decade with multi-unit projects in Toronto a driving force behind the trend.
The seasonally adjusted annualized rate of housing starts across Canada was 252,184 units — up from 222,695 units in October.
Ontario’s seasonally adjusted rate rose to 95,741 units in November from 57,916 units of all types in October.