House starts down

Housing starts in Red Deer continue to lag well behind last year’s pace, although the construction drop-off is more pronounced elsewhere in Alberta.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported on Friday that work was started on 15 homes in the city in April, with 13 of the projects single-family homes and two of the units in multi-family buildings. A year ago the monthly tally was 27, all of which fell under the single-family category.

This 44 per cent decline in housing starts compares favourably with most other large cities.

Medicine Hat experienced an April-to-April slide of 88 per cent, while in the Calgary metropolitan area the drop was 71 per cent, in Grande Prairie and the Edmonton metropolitan area it was 65 per cent and in Lethbridge it was 59 per cent. Only the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo had a better month than Red Deer for year-over-year construction starts, off just two per cent from the 2008 figure.