Home builders are hiring
Housing slowdown in Alberta not happening here
By: Murray McNeill
Updated: March 11, 2008 at 02:00 AM CDT
A growing number of carpenters are returning from Alberta and providing some much-needed relief for harried Manitoba home builders as they gear up for another banner spring and summer construction period.
\"They (framing crews) are calling us this year and e-mailing us...,\" Randall Homes vice-president Jason Jaquet said in an interview.
\"We never would have had them calling us last year,\" Jaquet said, adding the company took advantage of the housing slowdown in Alberta by adding five more framing crews (two or three men per crew) since December.
Officials with two other local home builders -- the Qualico Group of Companies and Parkhill Homes -- said they\'ve also been adding tradespeople from Alberta.
\"I wouldn\'t say they\'re coming back in droves,\" said Parkhill president Derek Thorsteinson. \"But it certainly looks like it (the skilled-labour shortage) is going to loosen up for a bit, and that\'s good.\"
\"I think we\'ve gotten through the worst of it in the last couple of years and things are looking pretty good,\" added Kevin Van, manager of Qualico\'s Winnipeg office and chairman of the Manitoba Home Builders Association.
Thorsteinson said the new workers are arriving at an opportune time because 2008 is shaping up as another banner year for home building activity in Manitoba even though the market is cooling down in Alberta and in some other parts of the country.
\"I don\'t see demand dropping off at all (in Manitoba),\" he said. \"We\'re very busy.\"
The latest housing start figures suggest that, as well.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation said Monday that last month was the busiest February in 14 years for housing starts in the Winnipeg Census Metropolitan Area.
The agency said there were 162 single and multi-family starts recorded during the month in the Winnipeg (CMA), which includes Winnipeg and 10 surrounding bedroom communities. That was an 86 per cent improvement over the 87 recorded in February of last year.
The biggest gain was in the multi-family segment of the market, where 64 new units were started last month compared to only two in February 2007. Single-family starts were up by 15 per cent to 98 units from 85 a year earlier.
Van and Thorsteinson both stressed that while the shortage of skilled tradespeople has eased, it\'s still far from over.
\"Everybody is still stressed and working like crazy,\" Thorsteinson said, adding the industry could easily take another 500 tradespeople if they were available.
\"We continue to battle with it,\" Van added. \"We\'ve got a better handle on it, but our crews are also getting older and who do have to replace them?\"On that latter note, Van said the industry has also been attracting more young people into the construction trades in the last couple of years, which is also encouraging. He said one industry training program for plumbers has turned out 40 new apprentices in the last two years.
While he agreed it\'s shaping up as another good year for the industry in Manitoba, Qualico officials are a little concerned about what\'s been going on in the Alberta and U.S. housing markets and will likely build fewer homes on speculation this year.
He said usually about 20 per cent of the homes the company builds each year are built on spec. This year it plans to trim that number back to 15 to 18 per cent, he added.
Jaquet said Randall Homes plans to built about the same number of homes as last year -- between 250 and 275, while Thorsteinson said Parkhill builds about 25 custom homes per year.
murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca |
