Housing Market in Kamloops Slows Down

This article is from the Kamloops Daily News and written by Staff reporter Jeremy Deutsch. This story is from the Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 paper. He states that housing starts are down, as I already expected. There is a lot of news in the media these days about the slumping real estate market not only in Kamloops but in North America. It will be interesting to see what the statistics are for housing starts and residential housing sales in the next couple months. I suspect that we will continue on this trend downwards, but it is pretty difficult to predict the future! Read below for the full article.

Following a trend of declining figures in housing sales and city building permits, the number of housing starts in Kamloops has also taken a dip. Statistics produced by the Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation (CMHC) show the 62 housing starts in January were down five per cent from 2008. But the small decline is deceiving, as the number of starts were boosted by one apartment project that began construction during the month.

A closer look reveals six single-detached housing starts, a decrease of 70 per cent from 20 which began in January 2008. Paul Fabri, a market analyst with CMHC, noted the numbers coming out of Kamloops are similar to those across the region. “We’ve seen economies in Kamloops, B.C. and North America begin to experience slower growth and that will mean less demand for housing.” he said.

Kelowna saw a 94 per cent decrease in housing starts last month, while Vernon dropped by 85 per cent. Fabri explained Kelowna’s market, compared to Kamloops is driven by demand for discretionary, resort or secondary housing, which has cooled off considerably, given the economic downturn. He surmised the slower pace of employment growth as the issue in Kamloops.

The CMHC isn’t expecting a quick turnaround either, predicting housing starts will stay low for most of the year.  Fabri also pointed out the last couple of years have been so hot, the number of housing starts now are similar to those during the 1990’s.

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