Total building permit values fell 38.2 per cent month-over-month in December to a seasonally adjusted $152.34 million, giving up a large proportion of the gains recorded in the previous month.
The city saw exactly the opposite movement from the previous month, as every sector recorded declines except the commercial sector, which had been the only segment to see a drop in November.
Statistics Canada analyst Nicole Charron said strong intentions for office buildings fuelled the increase in the commercial segment, pushing its values up by nearly double to $91.66 million, from $49.08 million in the previous month.
Double-digit declines were seen in every other category, the report showed, with the overall non-residential sector’s values falling 17.7 per cent to $96.74 million, despite the commercial-sector gain.
Activity for the volatile industrial segment dwindled to a mere $134,000, from $2.98 million in the previous month, which Ms. Charron attributed to a decline in the number of planned factories and plants, as well as utilities and transportation buildings.
As well, she added, a decline in the number of education building projects compared to the previous month drove institutional permit values down by 92.5 per cent to $4.94 million.
Meanwhile, the residential segment had a 56.9-per-cent decrease to $55.6 million. Weaker activity in December for multiple-unit construction was largely to blame for the housing decline, as the segment saw a 68.5-per-cent decrease in permit values to $22.41 million. However, plans for single-family units also dropped, resulting in a 42.7-per-cent decline in values to $33.19 million.
Despite the December decrease, Ottawa managed to end off the year with higher building permit values over the 12 months in 2009 than in the previous year.
Year-to-date, unadjusted values totalled $1.88 billion, up 5.2 per cent from 2008’s figures, largely due to the strength of non-residential construction intentions, which rose 22.1 per cent to $829.77 million.
The non-residential sector also had a significant impact elsewhere in the country, pushing total building permit values across Canada up by 2.4 per cent to $6.16 billion.
Ms. Charron noted the trajectory for non-residential construction intentions in Ottawa has been a “real yo-yo” since the peak reached in 2005.
Playing a key role in the local non-residential climb in 2009 was the industrial sector, which is normally fairly small compared to the other two non-housing related segments. The category’s values quadrupled to $103.8 million from the $25.72 million recorded in 2008, with Ms. Charron remarking that it was the industrial sector’s strongest showing since 1989.
The commercial sector reported an 11.1-per-cent gain year-over-year to $481.64 million, while the institutional segment posted a 10.9-per-cent increase to $244.32 million, the report showed.
On the residential side, permit values fell 5.2 per cent from a year earlier, to $1.05 billion, despite a 5.6-per-cent increase in multiple-unit values, which totalled an unadjusted $503.23 million in 2009.
Ms. Charron said the multiples segment in 2009 had its largest permit values total since 2004, although some of it could be accounted for by inflation.
