Building stats higher than expected

With one month to go until the end of 2009, construction values in Kamloops have climbed to $156 million.

That doesn’t hit last year’s record of almost $208 million, but it’s better than the average of about $120 million predicted earlier this year and it’s a solid figure in a recession year.

In November alone, 24 permits were issued for single-family homes. During the same month in 2008, five permits were issued.

For the first 11 months of this year, the City has issued 416 permits for houses of all types. One year ago, it was 573.

Last month wasn’t so productive for commercial or institutional permits, adding up to $3 million compared with $9 million in November, 2008.

But commercial and institutional construction for the past 11 months has almost kept pace with record-setting 2008, at $60.3 million compared with $61.7 million, respectively.

Brian Hayashi of Nexbuild Construction Corp. said he switched from building houses to renovations, but work has been steady.

“We’re small but we’re flat out now,” said the first vice-president of the Canadian Homebuilders Association Central Interior.

Construction in Kamloops seems to have dodged much of the impact of the recession, although it did get slow during the summer, he said.

“We just haven’t been as hard hit as other places. It started to pick up in September and it’s just maintained,” Hayashi said.

“I’m really happy that everyone’s kind of plugging along. There is quite a bit of new building. I feared the worst, having gone through the ’81 times. I would hate for that to happen again. But this is nothing like that. It’s just kind of slowed a little.”

He found lots of business when he switched to doing renovations.

“There was such a pent-up demand. There still is,” he said. “We ended up working for people who had been waiting for somebody. . . . That kept us going, plus some commercial.”

As a CHBA certified green builder, Hayashi said he’d like to focus on building energy-efficient homes. He believes demand for green houses is on the rise.

“It’s still early days,” he said.

Comments

Be the first to comment!