A Canadian housing market analyst credits the growing number of international students coming to Thunder Bay for a rise in apartment buildings made.
Christopher Zakher notes the figures date back to May of 2017, when rental vacancies dropped.
“Both the secondary rental market, which would be structures with fewer than 3 units, and the primary rental market, which is structures with 3 or more units, that seems to have inspired construction activity.”
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation observer adds new homes finished by May of this year also rose sharply.
He says based on numbers from May of 2018 to last month, Zakher says it seems due to people hanging onto what they own.
“The re-sale market in Thunder Bay has always been fairly supply constraint, there aren’t very many listings on the market. And that might be prompting some single family, new home construction.”
However, the housing analyst notes this is a slight bump in time, adding it’s not like figures going back 20 years.
He’s blaming the cost of new homes as the reason why the number of units built in Thunder Bay is slower than 20 years ago.
“Such that the newly constructed single family home is becoming increasingly out of reach for the average household income.”
