Greater Victoria is bucking a national construction trend.
While the value of building permits dropped almost four per cent to $9.9 billion for Canada as a whole, the value of permits in the Victoria Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) rose by almost 27 per cent to some $202 million, according to Statistics Canada.
The increase appears even more impressive when compared year-to-year as building permits rose 56.4 per cent in July 2021 compared to July 2020.
RELATED: Greater Victoria real estate expert laments lack of government action on housing supply
Greater Victoria recorded 617 new housing starts, an increase of 72.3 per cent over the previous month. But completions are down almost 80 per cent, pointing to the well-documented mismatch between the supply and demand for housing in the region.
Not surprisingly, Greater Victoria ranks third among Canada’s CMAs on the new housing price index, which measures changes over time in the contractors’ selling prices of new residential houses (single homes, semi-detached homes and townhouses).
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