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Thursday, May 31, 2007

CMHC "Housing Now" Report for April

CMHC released today the "Housing Now" report for Victoria for April. It can be found here.

I wish that CMHC would release these reports sooner. Today's report is for April, while tomorrow is June. April is old news already.

The big news is the large number of starts in April, combining with the current high level of construction in Greater Victoria. There are currently 3010 housing units under construction, a 45% rise over April of 2006. However, year to date, there is a 17% decrease on the number of units absorbed. Looks like overbuilding to me.

CMHC reports the average price of single detached dwellings from VREB statistics, however, they remove waterfront, acreage, duplex, and manufactured homes. This provides quite a different number for the average price. CMHC's average SFH price for April was $524600. VREB's average SFH price was $568710. That's a difference of $44100. Any ideas why CMHC removes those homes from the equation?

A quick chart comparing CMHC to VREB numbers for SFH average selling price.