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“There is demand, strong demand for homes in price ranges that can be reasonably purchased by people based on their local incomes,” Bond said. “That’s where sales have been the strongest. The market is finding its footing again and developers are taking that longer-term view that, ‘I’m building for 2021, 2022.’ ”

And the record starts for 2019, which Bond said exceed the last record set in 2016 by about 200 units, brought the total number of housing units under construction in Metro to 46,000, another record.

“What that means is everyone is busy building,” Bond said, leading to constraints on the availability of materials, equipment and labour for building, which will help keep a lid on growth in housing starts over the next two years.

However, the sheer number of homes being completed over the coming years, particularly condos, might also bring an additional dampening effect to either prices or rents, according to University of B.C. academic Tom Davidoff.

“I think completions (of units) are very good for the resale market and the rental market,” said Davidoff, director of the UBC centre for urban economics and real estate at the Sauder School of Business. “A lot of the buyers are investors, so I think we’ve seen a slowdown at least in the rate of growth in rents in the last year.”

However, the news of increased construction comes at the same time that sales have increased in the market for existing homes, which has others estimating the prices have at least stopped declining. Royal LePage tracked declining prices across Metro in the last three months of 2019 with the median price of a standard two-storey home falling 4.7 per cent to $1.4 million. The median price on condos fell six per cent to $645,607 over the same period.