Things are still a little slow in Owen Sound for new housing starts.
The city has released stats for July showing 45 building permits were issued last month with a value of just under 610 thousand dollars.
While its still slightly ahead of last year’s figures for July..the year to date stats paint another picture.
Only three new homes have been constructed in the city so far this year compared to 16 for the first half of last year and that’s WITH the temporary suspension of development charges.
Development Co ordinator Sandi Parks says builders have 12 months from the time they apply for the permit to completion in order to have the development fees waived.
Parks suspects many of them are waiting until they’re just ready to break ground before getting the permits — in order to have a year to build the home.
So she expects a bit of a flurry of activity in the coming few months.
And year to date construction values are way down so far this year…sitting at just over 8 million dollars while this time last year it was more than 21 million.
Parks says last year was hard to beat with several large projects in the city including new drugs stores and the waterfront Health Unit.
She’s hoping Owen Sound will hit the 20 million dollar mark by the end of the year which is more in keeping with an average year.