In total, for all the urban centres of 10 000 inhabitants and more in Quebec, 3 051 new housing starts have been registered last April compared to 3 964 a year earlier for the same period. These figures have been provided by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). One speaks about a decrease of 7 % here whereas an increase had still been observed for the months of February and March of 2009.
It are the individual homes that most affect these diminishing new housing starts, with a decrease of -18 %, for the periods compared (April 2009 versus April 2008).
However, in spite of diminishing new housing starts, Quebec continues to delineate itself from the rest of Canada: « Quebec registers weaker reductions than most of the other large Canadian regions, because the slowdown has started there earlier. Quebec is also relatively less affected than the other regions by the present economic slowdown », says Kevin Hughes, regional economist at the CMHC.
The pace of new housing starts displays important differences if one compares the figures with the municipalities of 100 000 inhabitants and more, when one signaled increases in Gatineau (more than a 100 %) and Trois-Rivières (+ 51 %), but fewer foundations were laid in Quebec City (- 46 %), Sherbrooke (- 28 %), Saguenay (- 25 %) and Montreal (- 15 %) compared to April of 2008.
One has also noticed a strong decrease of new housing starts in the cities of 50 000 to 99 999 inhabitants: Drummondville (- 32 %), Granby (- 19 %), Saint-Hyacinthe (- 48 %), Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu (- 33 %), and Shawinigan (- 9 %).