The pace of residential construction in Red Deer slowed last month, with fewer starts on single-detached and multi-family homes than in the same period of 2011.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported on Thursday that work commenced on 49 homes in the city during July, including 28 single-detached and 21 multi-family units.
That marked a nearly 40 per cent slide from July 2011, when there were 80 starts, consisting of 34 single-detached and 46 multi-family projects.
In June, Red Deer recorded 58 starts: 42 single-detached and 16 multi-family.
The year-over-year slide in July construction starts in the city was the greatest among Alberta’s seven largest urban areas.
The city of Grande Prairie dipped 10 per cent from July 2011 to July 2012, while the other urban areas were all up: Lethbridge by 143 per cent, Medicine Hat by 86 per cent, the Edmonton metropolitan area by 39 per cent, the Calgary metropolitan area by 38 per cent and the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo by nine per cent.
Despite their decline in July, housing starts in Red Deer this year are 18 per cent ahead of the tally for the first seven months of 2011 — at 363 versus 308.
Elsewhere in the province, housing starts in Medicine Hat were up 94 per cent in the January-to-July period, in the Calgary metropolitan area they improved by 90 per cent, in the City of Grande Prairie they were 71 per cent higher and in the Edmonton metropolitan area they were up 36 per cent higher. Wood Buffalo was down 28 per cent and Lethbridge was 25 per cent lower.