DC Has Second Highest Level of Construction Activity in the Country

• February 16, 2012

by Shilpi Paul

DC had the second highest construction activity in the country during the fourth quarter of 2011, Trulia’s Chief Economist Jed Kolko told UrbanTurf today.

In Trulia Insight’s latest post, Kolko took a look at building-permit data to sniff out where construction is booming. Generally, the US is showing an upward trend, with 10 percent more construction starts in the fourth quarter of 2011 compared with the previous year. Houston leads the pack, with more construction activity than any other city in the country, and DC comes in at #2. Detroit and Milwaukee were at the bottom.

Kolko said that 59 percent of new construction permits in the DC area were for multi-family projects, rather than single-family homes. Despite all this, permitting in DC is still 65 percent of the average during the period from 1990 to 2010.

The Trulia analysis came on the same day that the Census Bureau reported that new home starts and building permits across the country rose on a monthly and annual basis in January. Housing starts rose to an annual rate of 699,000, a 1.5 percent increase over December and a 10 percent jump from January 2011. Building permits were up 0.7 percent to 676,000 from January and a whopping 19 percent versus January 2011.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dc_has_second_highest_construction_activity_in_the_country/5149