Building permits continue downward trend

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This article was published 09/02/2016 (3563 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba posted only its second year-over-year decline in building-permit activity in a decade in 2015, new Statistics Canada numbers show.

The agency said Monday just under $2.3 billion worth of residential and non-residential permits were issued in the province last year. That was down 19.2 per cent from 2014’s total of just more than $2.8 billion.

The only other year in the past decade in which Manitoba saw a drop in permit activity from one year to the next was in 2009, during the global economic recession. That year, permit values were down 4.6 per cent from the previous year.

In the five years after that, the local construction industry racked up year-over-year increases ranging from 4.8 per cent to 34.9 per cent.

The president of the Winnipeg Construction Association said although last year’s total was down from 2014, that doesn’t mean the boom in construction activity is over.

“Our members have been saying to us, particularly in the last quarter, that things seem to be tightening up a little bit,’ Ron Hambley said. “But there is still a tremendous amount of work happening, and there is a tremendous amount of work planned.’

Some of the projects he cited were the new emergency ward being built at Grace Hospital, which is expected to cost about $35 million, a new $45-million personal care home planned for Winnipeg and the new Manitoba Clinic project.

“That’s going to be a big building — 10 storeys,’ he said.

Hambley said there’s also a lot of other tendering activity going on, which should keep builders busy through the rest of the winter and into the spring.

“And we’re still anticipating a very strong investment in infrastructure over the course of the summer,’ he said.

Last year’s drop-off in permit values came in spite of a flurry of activity in the final month of the year. Statistics Canada said December saw a 43.9 per cent jump in the value of permits issued by municipalities in the province — $227 million compared with 157.7 million in the previous month.

The surge in activity was evident on both sides of the market, with the value of non-residential permits up 46.3 per cent to $92.8 million for the month, and the value of residential permits climbing by 42.3 per cent to $134.2 million.

For the year as a whole, the biggest drop-off in permit activity was on the non-residential side, where permit values fell by 27.2 per cent to $930.1 million from $1.3 billion in 2014.

The residential side posted a more modest decline of 12.5 per cent  — $1.3 billion versus $1.5 billion.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca