July building permits on fast track with best performance in four years
While the most recent housing data from the U.S. Census Dept. says housing starts were down 1.1% in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 746,000 units, new building permits, which can be an indicator of future building activity, rose 6.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 812,000 units in July – the fastest pace in nearly four years.
Single-family permits rose 4.5 percent to 513,000 units (their best pace since March of 2010) while multi-family permits rose 11.2 percent to 299,000 units. Permit issuance rose in three out of four regions in July, with the Northeast registering a 12.2 percent gain, the South a 5.8 percent gain and the West a 14.0 percent gain. The Midwest posted a 4.2 percent decline.
In a press statement issued by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), Washington, D.C., Barry Rutenberg, NAHB chairman and a home builder from Gainesville, Fla., said, “While many builders believe that the outlook for housing is considerably brighter than it has been in years, we are being very careful about keeping inventories tight and not building ahead of demand. At the same time, builders are drawing more permits for new construction so we can accommodate buyers and renters as they return to the marketplace.”
About the Author
Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.