Building Blocks: Saint John Housing Starts Outpace Pre-Pandemic Levels
SAINT JOHN — Housing starts in the Saint John region have more than doubled over pre-pandemic levels, and are outperforming 2021 by 80 percent, according to data provided by regional growth agency Envision Saint John.
The agency says the first half of 2022 saw construction being on 318 houses. That is well over the 177 housing starts measured over the same period last year.
Of the 318 housing starts recorded in the first half of this year, 192 of those were in the multi-family category, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
It is a noteworthy value for Saint John, which saw its total first-half housing starts fall last year by 11, from 2020’s first-half total of 188, all while Canada’s housing market and relative demand for new builds remained red hot throughout the pandemic.
Canadian housing starts, by comparison, rose by 25 percent in 2021, one of the best years on record.
Pre-pandemic figures from 2019, when the number of housing starts from January to June in the Saint John region totalled 159, show how the city is not only emerging from the pandemic but growing past where it was prior.
Building permit values have also increased nearly 40 percent above pre-pandemic numbers, according to the agency, though 2020 remained the high point as permit values still dropped marginally, by $2.4 million, in 2021.
“As a data-driven agency, we look at trends to help inform strategy. The current data showcases the city of Saint John and our surrounding towns that make up the region are having a recording-breaking year when it comes to regional housing starts,” said Paulette Hicks, Envision Saint John’s CEO.
“Everyone is excelling,” Hicks said in a release of the latest numbers this week. “We expect to keep trending positively as the season progresses.”
With three months of the construction season statistics complete, the City of Saint John is also seeing its highest share of new units built in the last decade.
Supporting metrics point to further demand
The Port City also added to its population through July of last year (which was up over 1,400 since 2019), property tax base (by an additional $1.24-billion since 2020), and overall employment, according to Envision Saint John’s regional growth dashboard and numbers tracked by Statistics Canada and the provincial government.
However, despite strong growth in residential construction, increased population and better job prospects for the region have given way to a much faster rise in overall housing demand, which has led home prices to continue surging.
According to the Canadian Real Estate Association, national housing prices rose by 8.5 percent in 2020 and by a staggering 22 percent the last year. Many of the country’s urban areas saw the highest rates of growth, including Saint John.
CREA’s completed data through March of this year saw the average price of a single-family home in Saint John balloon to $329,789, up more than 18 percent from $270,097 in 2021, and up 40 percent from an average of $196,700 at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
More recent data shows demand for homes in Saint John remained very strong through June, despite interest rate hikes from the Bank of Canada cooling the national housing market.
According to the Saint John Real Estate Board, home sales were still 18.8 percent above Saint John’s five-year average and 38.4 percent above the 10-year average for the month of June.
Tyler Mclean is a Huddle reporter based in Fredericton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].