Housing starts in Alberta are on an upswing as the price of oil hits multi-year highs on surging
demand and tight global supplies.
According to Statistics Canada, housing starts in Alberta rose 15.2% in May, hitting a seven-
year high of 46,456 units.
Taking rural areas out of the equation and looking only at cities with a population of 10,000 or
more residents, housing starts in Alberta were up 34.6% year-over-year in May. Housing starts
in all of Canada increased 3.4% last month from a year earlier.
The fact that housing starts in Alberta are now at their highest level since March 2015 shows
that the province is successfully emerging from years of economic stagnation.
New home construction in Alberta boomed between 2010 and 2014, a period when oil and
natural gas prices were soaring. But the oil price crash that began in late 2014 plunged the
province into a recession and slowed home construction.
The province is also attracting new residents from across Canada. Alberta led all other
provinces in interprovincial migration in the fourth quarter of 2021 for the first time since 2015,
according to Statistics Canada.
