Housing starts in California rose 2% in April. It wasn't big, but builders in Golden State will take it.
"While it wasn't a huge increase, it's nice to see a slight improvement over last year," said Mike Winn, president of the California Building Industry Association. "We are closing the gap compared with last year in year-to-date figures as well, and we hope to see continued increases in the summer months."
According to the Construction Industry Research Board, permits were pulled for 3,474 housing units in April. That's a 2% year-over-year gain, but a drop of 23% from March.
Single-family permits totaled 1,978 units, down 16% from April 2010 but up 10% from the previous month. Multifamily permits came in at 1,496, a 43% gain from a year ago but down 45% from March.
For the first four months of the year, permits have been taken out for a total 13,250 units, a slight decrease of 4% when compared to the first four months of 2010, when 13,784 permits were issued. Permits for single-family homes were down 22% while permits for multifamily units were up 26%.
CIRB is now projecting 51,000 total permits for 2011. While that's up from 44,762 permits in 2010, but still down from the 64,962 that were taken out in 2008.
"It appears we will experience another year of modest improvement, but it's an improvement nonetheless," said Winn.
