Housing starts in St. Albert and Morinville cooled last month but were not far from 2010 numbers, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
St. Albert saw construction start on 15 single-detached homes last month, compared with 18 for the same period last year. In Morinville, there were five housing starts, a slight increase from four units in 2010.
So far this year, St. Albert has seen construction on 22 new single-family homes, an increase of one over last February. Morinville has seen 19 new homes, up from nine at this time last year.
"At this time of year, you're not going to see much of a trend emerging," said Richard Goatcher, senior market analysis with CMHC.
According to Goatcher, activity slowed last fall, after rebounds occurred in late 2009 and early 2010.
"Now we're sort of in that reverse situation that we were a year ago. We're comparing ourselves against a time when builders were playing catch up. They were trying to build up some inventory where now inventories have been replenished on the single-detached side and so there is a bit of moderation going on across the region," he said.
For the fifth consecutive month, total housing starts in the Capital region declined on a year-over-year basis last month, according to the CMHC.
"On the single detached side, last year's numbers were pretty average, close to the 10-year average, which is around 6,000 units."
No growth in multi-family
There were no new multi-family units in St. Albert or Morinville last month.
"The multi-family units are still relatively weak and that's because we had a couple of really strong years at the end of the decade that kind of built up the inventory and that inventory still remains pretty comfortable," Goatcher said.
The number of multi-family units tends to swing back and forth, he added.
"You'll get a burst of activity and the market will be really well supplied and then everything will cool off in terms of new construction and then they'll go back at it again later on."
While there's plenty of multi-family units today, Goatcher said activity will need to pick up toward the end of the year, or early 2012.
"Otherwise we could be in a shortage situation by 2012."
Gary Acheson of Sarasota Homes, which builds custom homes in St. Albert and Edmonton, said the amount of traffic through the company's show homes is up significantly over last February.
"In terms of percentage terms, 35 or 40 per cent up," Acheson said.
"We really gauge our business on the amount of customization that we're doing, the amount of design work that we're doing and we're really busy with respect to that."
Acheson said he doesn't want to see a big boom in housing starts.
"It's so hard to manage the quality of the product to be in that time frame," he said.
"I like it just a nice steady business flow and I think that's the type of environment we're getting into."
