After a decade of steady decline and a surprise jump in March housing starts for the Abbotsford-Mission CMA plummeted 80% in April.
Starts on single detached homes dropped 56 percent with All Other dropping 97%
According to figures released Tuesday by Canada Mortgage and Housing (CMHC) Abbotsford Mission had the largest decrease in the country on a par with Thunder Bay.
According to CMHC:
“Housing starts in Canada were 25.4 per cent lower in April of this year than they were the same month last year, a clear sign that Canada’s housing market has slowed considerably.
“According to data from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., housing starts ran at an annualized pace of 182,754 units this April, compared to 244,900 in April 2012. Housing starts fell 2.5 per cent from March to April, led by a decline in multiple urban starts (condos) of 3.5 per cent.
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“A slowdown of this magnitude will likely take a toll on Canada’s employment numbers. Will Dunning, an economist with the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals, recently estimated that Canada will lose 190,000 jobs as a result of the housing slowdown.”
To see what has happened to Housing Starts in Abbotsford over the last decade steady decline“>click here.
To follow Abbotsford’s Economic Indicators which the newspapers do not publish simply look in the Abbotsford Today Business Section or simply click here.
I find it is interesting that we seem to have lost the ability to recognize circular logic. The comment that the drop in housing will cause a loss of 190,000 jobs… If there was a market for the houses, someone would build them. What would be the sense in building them if there are no buyers? That would delay the reality, and make it worse. We are suffering the challenges of an economic model based on growth. CPP, healthcare, ALL the programs are dependent on growth that is not happening, and we have had the writing on the wall for many, many years, but done nothing. The Baby Boom is a pig in the python, and we have just sat back and watched it work through. It has now made its way, and we have squandered the wealth when it was there. There is nothing sustainable about how we live today.