Naturally, the activity was centred in a few major urban areas, with Toronto standing out as the most active market by far. There is nearly the same number of homes currently under construction in the Toronto metropolitan area as the metro areas of Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary combined.
With 81,061 total homes under construction in the metro area — 47,750 of those located in the City of Toronto — Canada’s largest city easily tops BuzzBuzzHome’s first quarterly report on Canada’s Top Ten Residential Construction Markets.
The report is based on BuzzBuzzHome’s new construction data collected at the end of the second quarter of 2014.
Of the 47,750 homes under construction in the City of Toronto, 43,682 (91.48 per cent) of those were condos. Zooming out for a view of the entire Toronto metropolitan area, there were 52,714 condos under construction or 65.03 per cent of the total number of homes under construction.
Montreal was second on the list behind Toronto with 30,238 homes under construction in its metropolitan area. Within that total, 13,976 of those homes were being built in the City of Montreal.
Widely seen as Canada’s hottest up-and-coming market, Calgary was third on the list with 29,438 homes under construction in the city’s metropolitan area.
The breakdown of condos under construction versus houses and townhouses differed significantly when compared to Toronto and Montreal. There were 22,932 homes in the house/townhouse category being built in the Calgary metro area at the end of the second quarter. That’s 77.9 per cent of the total number of homes currently under construction. In Canada’s two largest cities, the percentage for houses/townhouses was only 34.97 per cent in Toronto and 27.3 per cent in Montreal.
Calgary’s metropolitan area also stood out on the list when looking at the number of homes under construction relative to its population. There were 2.42 homes under construction per 100 people in the metro area, by far the highest in the top 10.
The Vancouver housing market may be the most expensive in Canada, but the metropolitan area comes in fourth in the country when looking at current residential construction activity. There were 22,412 homes under construction in the Vancouver metropolitan area of which 15,206 were condos.
The major story in Vancouver is just how much construction activity is happening outside of the city proper’s borders in suburbs like Surrey and New Westminster. Narrowing the focus down to the City of Vancouver, there were 5,604 total homes under construction, of which 5,098 were condos.
Have a look at the summary graph and table below and then download the full report here.
Please note that data was gathered from BuzzBuzzHome’s Market Snapshot at the end of the second quarter 2014. Because the data is updated on the site in real time, not all numbers will match on the current Market Snapshot view.
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