New home starts continue to rise

Despite a huge jump in new housing starts in January over last year, the Canada Mortgage and Housing says we can only expect modest gains for the rest of the year.

Market Analyst Paul Fabri says two new rental housing projects caused a massive 850% jump in new home construction last month.

"Single-family housing starts will probably lead the new home market this year," says Fabri, "and, as we've seen this month, rental home construction will make up a large part of the multi-family starts this year."

Fabri says in all, we saw 161 housing starts in January, which is up from 17 homes a year ago.

Out of those, there were 44 new single-family housing starts last month.

Fabri says housing starts were up across BC, and most of Canada.

Charmaine de Silva - Kelowna