THUNDER BAY -- An economist at Lakehead University says he's not surprised that Thunder Bay posted its lowest number of new home builds in decades this past year and he’s expecting that trend to continue for at least the next two years.
According to stats released by Canada Mortgage and Housing, the city saw just 120 single detached housing starts in 2017.
That's far lower than the first few years of this decade, which averaged about 200 single family homes built each year.
The number began falling in 2014, and has now reached the lowest level in the past 30 years or more.
LU economics professor Livio Di Matteo said the lack of new industry has finally caught up to the city's home construction market.
“They’ve been coming down for the last five years, I mean the long term is that market is finally getting saturated,” Di Matteo said.
“For the longest time, it was probably surprising that there were as many single detached starts as there were given that the population is flat and the employment level has been flat over a decade.”
On the flip side, the city saw a big jump in apartment construction with 154 new units built this past year. The total units surpassed the last three years combined.
Di Matteo attributes it mostly to the dramatic growth of international students attending Confederation College and Lakehead University.
“The fact that there’s a low vacancy rate, an influx that’s prompted a response on the part of the business side of the community to invest in additional apartment units and housing stock,” Di Matteo said.
“I think that that’s certainly good news, but once that’s in place I don’t expect that to continue over the next few years.”
Di Matteo expects housing construction to lag for the next few years, as the economy remains flat in Thunder Bay.
(TBT News)
