Housing Activity Slows In Hanover

The Planning Manager for Hanover says there are new housing starts happening throughout the municipality. But Jeremy Neufeld says the first quarter of 2017 was not as busy as the same period one year earlier.

From January 1st to March 31st, 2017 there were 15 permits pulled for residential construction totalling $3.3 million. Compare that to the same period one year earlier when there were 26 permits worth $5.9 million.

Of those permits, three were for Grunthal and two in each of the communities of Blumenort, Kleefeld and Mitchell.

"We have surpassed the fifty percent mark in the number of houses in urban centres versus rural," says Neufeld. "We're now seeing more of a shift towards urban housing as opposed to the rural or rural residential."

Neufeld says that is what administration wants. He notes it is much more efficient to manage infrastructure and there is more compliance with provincial land use policies if they can have most housing activity happening in their communities.

Meanwhile, total building permits were also down in the first quarter. There were 41 permits pulled this year worth $4.4 million, compared to 57 for $7.1 million during the same period one year ago.

Neufeld says though building activity was down, there were a lot of inquiries in the first quarter and he says that is a bigger indicator of the type of year they can expect.

"Based on the number of people coming in, the number of phone calls we are receiving, I'm optimistic that we're going to see numbers increase throughout the year," he says.