The number of building permits issued and new residential units created in Cambridge were down in 2024 and below the five-year average.
An internal memo included in a council information package shows there were 1,675 building permits issued in 2024 compared to 2,020 in 2023. This is only slightly below the five-year average between 2019 and 2023 of 1,679.
Of the permits issued, 816 new residential units were created in 2024. This is down by over 360 compared to 2023 which saw 1,178 new residential units from permits. The five-year average for new residential units is 957.
Broken down by residential unit type created in 2024 there were: 100 singles or semi-detached units, 320 townhouse units, 136 apartment units and 260 additional residential units created in 2024.
“The Building Faster Fund target number of new units in Cambridge, as part of the City of Cambridge’s pledge to help facilitate the creation of 19,000 new units by 2031, was 1,583 in 2023,” the report said.
“Eight-hundred and sixteen units created through building permit issuance account for 52 per cent of the target number of units.”
Tanya Gies, Chief Building Official with the City of Cambridge, explained in a phone interview the number of permits issued isn’t the metric counted by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to access the Building Faster Fund, which requires municipalities to reach 80 per cent of the target.
It does factor into two of the three metrics being counted which are new home construction starts and additional residential unit conversions, she said.
The third metric is the number of new or upgraded long-term care beds.
According to the ministry’s tracker, Cambridge hit 626 units or just under 40 per cent of its goal last year.
“Essentially for 2024, the City of Cambridge is not eligible for the Building Faster Fund,” Gies said based on her data.
Cambridge isn’t alone, she added. Many municipalities struggled to hit those targets due to economic factors.
“It is going to take a few years to ramp up and be able to be in a position where any incentive programs or market corrections could happen that would allow for a better market for developers to be building new housing,” Gies said. “The municipality, we’re not the ones building it. We’re processing permits, we need builders to apply for permits in order for us to then be able to issue them.”
While the number of permits and new residential units created were down, the construction value of the permits were up over 2023 and significantly over the five-year average.
Construction value of the permits in 2024 were over $792 million, a 17 per cent increase compared to 2023 which were valued over $678 million. This was also over a 50 per cent increase on the five-year average of over $513 million.