New home construction through July beat whole-year totals for both 2019 and 2020, according to the latest figures released by the City of Medicine Hat planning and building department.--News Photo Collin Gallant
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
The average price of a new home built in Medicine Hat this year has likely topped $500,000, according to figures released by the city’s planning department.
The same figures show a relatively strong rebound in the new housing sector through seven months compared to the wild swings in the sector through the pandemic in 2020.
A total of 37 building permits were issued for all of 2020, itself an increase from just 20 in 2019. That was the low-point in a prolonged slump for the development community.
“Some of that may be overflow from last year; projects that were put on hold,” said Joel Bosch, president of the local chapter of the Canadian Homebuilders Association. “But it does feel busy out here.”
The average house built in 2020 was budgeted to cost $308,000, according to system used by the city planning desk to estimate construction cost, about 30 per cent less than estimates attached to permits this year.
Such numbers don’t consider inflationary measures, as seen in material pricing coming out of the pandemic, but are based on a bare price estimate per square foot.
That suggests larger square-footage in this year’s projects.
As well, the figure is only specific to construction and doesn’t consider the cost of land.
Eight new single-family home permits were released in July, the most recent report from the city’s planning department.
No other residential projects were handled in the month, but to that point in the year spending on Duplexes and tri-plexes has essentially doubled, year-over year.
Year to date 11 duplexes and three other multi family permits had been issued.
Other residential permits for renovations were also tracking up 25 per cent, and spending on new garages increased dramatically, to nearly $1 million on 56 projects as of July 31, compared to $732,000 on 37 permits in early 2020.
In total, 536 permits were attached to building permits with an estimated value of $49.3 million over seven months. That’s up from 411 permits worth $26.6 million in the same period of 2020, though the recent figure includes $10 million in additional “institutional” projects related to government projects.
