Edmonton’s skyline will see its first new high-rise in two decades. Epcor has announced a new 28-story head office will be built in "Station Lands." The EPCOR Tower, to be completed by 2012, will be located on 101st Street, between 104th and105th Avenue, Northwest of the CN Tower and North of the surfaceparking lot at the corner of 104 Avenue and 101 Street.
EPCOR Tower will use new environmentally friendly design with a system that collects rainwater from the rooffor other uses, large windows to maximize solar heating and a way torecycle exhaust air to heat the garage.
At the same time new home construction has slowed considerably in Edmonton, which I think is great news for our housing market. With current inventory at high levels, and many new listings expected this spring, there has been a lot of concern about the rate of new construction in Edmonton. As we previously reported on the blog, many builders are starting to back-fill the holes they’ve already dug for basements, and with new starts on the decline concerns about new construction adding to housing inventory are lowered.
Yesterday Canada Mortgage and Housing (CMHC) reported that housing starts declined by 42% from last November. Housing starts for the year are still slightly ahead of 2006 numbers, we’ll have to wait and see what happens in December.
CMHC did not include a chart with their stats, but luckily I have one from a couple of months ago which helps put things in perspective. This chart below shows the number of multi-family housing starts in Edmonton for the past three years, the two bright pink bars are ones that I’ve added in, from the monthly releases of the two past months since they haven’t published any graphs in a while:
As you can see, last November’s numbers were way above the norm, so comparing this November to last is not really fair. So, while some people have already posted their "doom and gloom" thoughts on these stats in the comments for previous articles on this blog I see them as both positive and negative. While slowing construction typically is an indicator that there is a downturn in the economy, I see November’s numbers as fairly normal historically – they are only down compared to last November. If the numbers were lower still I would be happier, since there would be even less inventory coming on the market in the coming months.
