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Housing construction pace doubles this year in capital region

The number of new housing units started in Greater Victoria continues to surge ahead of last year, with construction ramping up for both condominiums and single-family houses.

The number of new housing units started in Greater Victoria continues to surge ahead of last year, with construction ramping up for both condominiums and single-family houses.

Last month, 260 new units were started — more than double the 117 in August 2014. So far this year, 1,430 new homes began construction, an 83 per cent increase from 780 in the same months in 2014, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said in its monthly report.

Multi-family units led home starts last month with 173 units. Of those, 122 were in the city of Victoria, a regional focus for condo development.

Demand for new homes in Greater Victoria is “being supported by rising migration to the region and the low mortgage interest rate environment,” said Eric Bond, the federal agency’s senior market analyst.

Developer David Chard is optimistic about downtown residential construction. “I think there is going to be continued demand,” he said Wednesday. “There is definitely a lot of retirees starting to move to Victoria from across Canada.”

After the 2008 recession, Chard figures many people decided to continue working for several years to make up for losses in the stock market and now they are starting to buy.

“It’s not a fast-paced market,” Chard said, adding units in new buildings will generally be sold out over a period of a couple of years.

Last spring, Chard started the 84-unit Escher on Broughton Street. It will be finished in late fall 2017.

More recently, excavation began at 819 Yates St., another Chard project. After the 15-storey, 209-unit building is completed in 30 months, it will go to a new owner, a Canadian pension fund, Chard said.

This is Chard’s seventh project in Victoria and his first rental. Units will be designated as rental for a minimum of 10 years and will be one and two bedrooms, running from about 450 square feet to about 800 square feet. The ground floor will have 6,600 square feet of commercial space.

New starts in the capital region are also being driven by single-family homes. There were 87 started in August, including 41 in Langford and 12 in Sooke.

The Victoria Residential Builders organization said the number of single-family starts is the highest since the time before the housing decline that followed the 2008 recession.