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The Vancouver region, already facing a massive decline in sales of existing homes, is now dealing with a slowdown in new home construction as well.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. Tuesday released statistics for national housing starts that show the British Columbia market numbers falling fast, a development that comes in the wake of new mortgage financing rules from Ottawa that went into effect last month and a new Vancouver-specific foreign property transfer tax of 15 per cent that came into play in August.

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Earlier this month, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reported October saw a 38.8 per cent year-over-year decline in home resales.

“British Columbia is the big story, with starts falling sharply to 27,600 (on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis) after pushing record levels, north of 50,000 at one point, earlier in the year. October’s tally brings activity back down to the very stable, and fundamentally supported, range seen between 2010 and mid-2015, before activity broke out to the upside,” said Robert Kavcic, senior economist with Bank of Montreal. “We’ll see if this level of activity, particularly in Vancouver where starts fell to the lowest since 2011, holds in the months ahead in response to softening demand conditions.”