Housing starts are projected to rebound in Windsor in 2024, according to recently released data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
The latest housing market outlook from CMHC was released on Wednesday, May 1.
Officials are expecting single-detached home construction to recover this year with stabilizing interest rates, strong population growth, and a lack of supply on the resale market.
In addition, the corporation is also forecasting increases in both home prices and sales driven by a decline in mortgage rates.
Speaking on AM800's The Shift with Patty Handysides, CMHC's lead economist for southern Ontario Anthony Passarelli says this year they do see things trending up more in both construction and sales in the second half of this year.
"In Windsor, we think there's going to be a similar to slightly higher level of construction in new homes. The single detached market was quite slow last year in terms of new home construction. We do see some level of picking up in that segment, it'll take a year or two to get back to sort of levels we saw prior to the interest rate hikes," he said.
Passarelli says they're also anticipating more action on the apartment building side locally, as well as nationally, due a higher demand of people wanting to live in apartments as a result of the affordability crunch.
"We think that's going to be pretty steady construction, similar to the last few years. Because there's a lot of demand for living in apartments, whether that's to own them or also the rental side as well where there's been a lot of incentives put in place to build."
He says with Windsor growing in population due to new investments announced the last couple of years it's important that all sorts of new builds are getting off the ground, from new homes, to apartments, to multi-unit buildings.
"We have a population growth expected to be quite strong in the next couple of years because of those economic projects. We still think there's going to be strong amounts of immigration to the region. Everything is pointing to that stronger population growth which is going to increase the demand for housing, and again that could be on both the ownership and the rental side," he said.
Passarelli says with the pace of multi-unit construction activity expected to remain steady it could lead to a modest increase in the overall vacancy rate in Windsor, which has been at historically low levels for the past two years.
- with files from AM800's The Shift with Patty Handysides