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By Liam Verster

6 Projects Started in Vernon

New home construction in Greater Vernon remains slow

Apr 17, 2024 | 11:00 AM

Local housing starts remained down significantly on an annual basis last month.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) reported Greater Vernon saw just six housing project starts in March of 2024.

While up from four starts in February, that figure was down from 14 starts in the same month the previous year.

As of the end of March, Greater Vernon saw 22 housing projects started in 2024, marking a significant decline from the 71 starts in the first three months of 2023.

All the local starts in March were single family homes.

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So far in 2024, Greater Vernon has seen construction begin on 17 single family homes, four semi-detached homes, and one apartment.

In Kelowna, there were a total of 395 housing projects started in March, which included 16 single detached homes and 379 apartments. CMHC did not provide specific data but did state that single family, semi-detached and row house starts were down from the same month in 2023, while apartment construction rose.

In total, there have been 55 single family home, 16 semi-detached, 16 row house, and 764 apartment starts in Kelowna, totaling 851 housing project starts in the first three months of the year. However, those figures, including the total housing starts, were all down from the same period of 2023.

While the local housing construction was down on an annual basis, that was not the case for the province or the country.

CMHC reported 4,867 housing starts across British Columbia last month, up from the 4,018 starts in March of 2023.

Canada saw construction of 17,052 housing projects begin this past March, up from the 14,756 housing starts recorded one year ago.

To date, there have been 10,745 housing projects started in B.C. and 49,389 across Canada, up from the 10,531 and 43,798 housing projects recorded during the same period of 2023, respectively.