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Thursday, December 27, 2007

CMHC "Housing Now" Report for November

The November edition of CMHC's "Housing Now" report for Victoria is now available.

Highlights include (the usual):
- robust construction activity.
- low unemployment.
- a slowing in new home starts.

CMHC's construction volume graph changed this month. Last month, construction volume was displayed as a total for Greater Victoria. This month, it's a bar graph for the different regions (figure 1). Perhaps the change is due to the fact that the old graph was downright scary, as under construction numbers are at record highs, and continue increasing.

If Victoria's construction volume dropped from today's number of 3296 units under construction, to historical norms, around 1000 units under construction, I wonder what the city's unemployment level would be. What if construction dropped to 1990's levels?

But of course, that will never happen. Everyone wants to live here and housing will never go down.