Building Construction, February 2025

The following statistics were released from the Economics and Statistics Division on April 22, 2025. For full details from this dataset, click here.

Monthly (February 2025 vs January 2025, seasonally adjusted)

  • Investment in Nova Scotia building construction fell 7.6% in February 2025 to $549.4 million, the fastest decline among provinces
  • Halifax monthly building construction was down 6.3% to $336.9 million while outside of Halifax building construction was down 9.6% to $212.5 million
  • Nationally, investment in building construction increased 1.5% with declines in six provinces

  • Nova Scotia’s non-residential building construction rose 4.2% to $109.2 million
  • In Halifax, non-residential construction was up 1.1% to $63.5 million
  • Outside of Halifax, non-residential construction was up 8.9% to $45.8 million

Year-to-date (January-February 2025 vs January-February 2024)

  • Compared to January-February 2024, building construction investment was up 17.0% in Nova Scotia
  • Halifax construction activity was up 43.8% and outside of Halifax construction activity was down 9.3%
  • National building construction investment was up 7.4%
    • Saskatchewan reported the largest gain, followed by New Brunswick and Nova Scotia

  • Nova Scotia’s non-residential construction was up 15.9% compared to January-February 2024
  • Halifax’s non-residential construction rose 15.8% while outside of Halifax, non-residential construction was up 16.0%
  • National non-residential construction investment increased 6.4%

  • All categories of building construction investment increased in Halifax, with the fastest gain in multiple unit dwellings and the slowest in commercial construction
  • For non-residential building construction in the rest of Nova Scotia, the fastest growth was in institutional/government investment, while commercial construction declined

Trends

  • Halifax commercial building construction has plateaued and begun to decline in recent months, while institutional/government and industrial projects continue to grow
  • Outside the city, non-residential investment levels have declined in recent months on falling commercial building investments
Building Construction Price Index, Q1 2025

The following statistics were released from the Economics and Statistics Division on April 25, 2025. For full details from this dataset, click here.

  • Overall non-residential building costs were up 1.3% in Halifax from Q1 2024 to Q1 2025
    • This was tied with St. John’s for the slowest growth in non-residential construction costs among major cities
  • Across the 15 major Census Metropolitan Areas, overall non-residential building construction costs grew 3.5%

  • In Halifax, the pace of building cost inflation slowed for all categories of non-residential structure:
    • schools (+1.6%)
    • office buildings (+1.5%)
    • warehouses (+1.4%)
    • factories (+1.3%)
    • shopping centres (+1.2%)
    • bus depot/repair buildings (+0.9%)

  • Among components of building costs, residential construction inflation is up most for
    • concrete
    • structural steel framing
  • Non-residential building construction costs grew most rapidly for integrated automation and communications
  • There were no cost components in residential and non-residential building construction that reported price declines over the last year