Posts 40% increase in September over last year.

Edmonton-area builders set a new record in September, starting 888 detached houses.

That's "a 40-per-cent incease over the same month last year and the highest monthly tally ever recorded for a single month" for the Edmonton area, according to Canada mortgage and Housing Corp., which releasede the figures Tuesday.

"Among Canada's metropolitan areas, the Edmonton region's output was second only to Toronto, outpacing single-detached builders in the more populace Montreal, vancouver and Calgary census metrolpolitan areas," said Richard Goatcher, CMHC senior market analyst in Edmonton.

"We've had pretty high immigration in Edmonton and the whole province," Goatcher said. "There's not a lot of selection in the resale market. And the huge increases in resale home prices put the new construction into a more competitive position."

The spring and summer surge in home construction could soften the resale market over the next several months, Goatcher suggested. "A lot of people will list their existing homes when they take possession of their new homes."

Multiple-unit starts in the Edmonton area fell from the same month last year for the second consecutive month.

But such figures can be misleading, Goatcher said, because each project includes so many units.

Total Edmonton-area starts are up 15.4 per cent, year-to-date, from the first nine months of 2005. Year-to-date starts are up 20.9 per cent in Red Deer, 25.7 per cent in the Calgary area, 40.9 per cent in Medicine Hat, 65.1 per cent in canmore, 65.6 per cent in Grande Prairie and 71.5 per cent in Okotoks.

Year-to-date starts are down 4.2 per cent in Wood Buffalo.

"Investment in oilsands projects had led to an accumulation of demand for housing units, which builders are working to satisfy (in Wood Buffalo)," said CMHC market analyst Marni Plunkett.

However, "althought multi-family starts were at a nine-month high in September, they could not compete with September 2005 which was the best September on record," she said.

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