MONCTON – Cold weather and snow have put a freeze on new home construction in the province.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released the number of new housing starts for March in New Brunswick. Figures show this has been the slowest start in the new home construction season the province has seen in more than five years.
“In 24 years of doing this we have never spent so much time just clearing snow. It was unbelievable, nine foot drifts in the back of the house, we had to get a mini excavator in to clear it away,” said Larry Brubacher, a siding subcontractor.
New home builder Pierre Martell says this winter hit so hard and fast, he lost two full weeks of construction days due to storms in February and March.
“This is probably one of the worst winters we’ve had since we started building nine years ago,” he said. “It was probably $15-$20,000 from the bottom line lost because of the winter weather.”
Martell says he’s built more than 400 homes across New Brunswick in the last eight years and this has been his most costly winter.
And now, the spring new home construction season is behind by about three weeks.
“Our clients don’t want to pay the extra $500-$600 to clear the lot before we start digging. We just kind of delay them a bit.”
CMHC says on average in Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton contractors break ground on about 22 new homes. This year, there were 6.
But CMHC’s Claude Gautreau says there’s no need for contractors to panic just yet.
“Even though the first quarter was slow you can probably catch up quite a bit fairly easily in the second quarter,” he said.
That means builders like Martell may have to pay out even more overtime to meet tighter construction deadlines.
“It will be crunch time so our already shortened building season because we live in the Atlantic provinces is now shorter again,” he said.
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