It was the highest amount ever recorded in one month
Derrick Penner
Sun
Contractors across Greater Vancouver took out almost $1 billion worth of building permits in November, the highest amount ever recorded in a single month, the Vancouver Regional Construction Association said Wednesday.
Builders sought permits on $933 million in work in November, according to Statistics Canada’s survey on building permit activity. The construction association said that surpasses the previous record of $733 million recorded in June 2004.
And non-residential permits of $380 million topped the record set in the previous month.
“[Growth in permits] is very strong and consistent with what we were expecting to see on the non-residential side,” Keith Sashaw, president of the Vancouver Regional Construction Association, said in an interview.
On the residential side, Sashaw said changes to B.C.’s building code for exterior-finishing requirements that took effect in December might have brought many of those permits forward into November.
However, on the non-residential side, permits were also up with “a nice mix” of commercial, institutional and industrial projects, Sashaw added. He said there was no single project that skewed November’s numbers higher.
“Again, that’s one of the underlying reasons for optimism about what’s happening in the construction industry,” Sashaw said.
For 2006 up to Nov. 30, the value of non-residential permits was up 38 per cent to almost $2.6 billion. Commercial-project permits were up the most at 51 per cent.
Residential permits were up almost nine per cent to the end of November to almost $4.4 billion.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
