There are more places to live in St. Albert this year thanks to a moderate building spree that saw 65 more condominiums built and a total of 154 more single family dwellings.
September was especially busy for builders, who started hammering on 32 new single-family dwellings compared to just 14 in the same period the year before.
“St. Albert building starts are double for September what they were in 2010 and year-to-date the numbers are up slightly,” said Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation analyst Richard Goatcher.
Approximately 13 of those new homes are being built in the Brickyard of Erin Ridge. A further 13 are being built in North Ridge and the remainder of the homes are in Kingswood and Oakmont, explained Bruce Randall, the city’s business development manager.
Randall also noted that condominium starts in St. Albert are steady.
“The Tenor on Sturgeon Road is finally completed and this summer 65 units came on the market. Also there are 248 new units in North Ridge Village Apartments, that will be complete in 2012 and construction began on the Habitat for Humanity project in Akinsdale,” Randall said.
The increase in building starts mirrors similar increases in Morinville, Sturgeon County and Edmonton, Goatcher said.
Housing starts in the Edmonton region totalled 820 units compared with 873 in September 2010. Single-detached starts in September increased by 13 per cent.
“This represented the best monthly performance for Edmonton’s single-family builders since July 2010,” Goatcher said.
He explained that builders were behind as the new year came in because they were cautious about building in a lacklustre housing market. Then they got caught by the winter storms of January 2011.
“The builders didn’t want too much inventory as they came into 2011 so they throttled back,” he said. “Then they got hit by crappy weather and I would say now they are catching up.”
