California’s home builders suffered through their third lowest year on record in 2011. The only thing that kept the year from being worse was the apartment sector, which rose sharply.
According to the Construction Industry Research Board, 47,015 permits were issued statewide last year for new houses and apartments. That’s up 5% from 44,762 permits in 2011, but down 28% from 64,962 in 2008, which was the third lowest year since the CIRB started keeping records in 1954.
Hidden in those numbers was a record low 21,240 single-family permits, down 16% from 2010. Multifamily activity took up the slack, with permits for 25,595 units, a gain of 33%.
“We are far from being out of the woods just yet,” said Mike Winn, president of the California Building Industry Association. “Perhaps the only positive aspect to take away from this is that the numbers are at least headed in the right direction.”
For December alone, permits totaled 5,291, down 21% from December 2010, but up 15% from November. It was the highest monthly total in all of 2011. But it’s hard to compare December-to-December stats because in 2010 builders rushed to pull permits to avoid building code changes that took effect Jan. 1, 2011.
Single-family permits totaled 1,899, down 44% year-over-year but up 20% from November. Multifamily permits totaled 3,392, up 3% from the previous December, and 12% from the previous month.
CIRB is now projecting 57,000 total permits will be pulled in 2012, a 21% increase from 2011, but still down from 2008.
“We hope for more robust homebuilding activity in 2012, but it appears we will be forging ahead on a long road back to healthy productions levels,” said Winn.
Meanwhile, in the six-county Southern California region, the state-wide results were similar.
Single-family home building fell to a post-World War II low. But thanks to a big increase in apartment construction, the total number of housing starts in the region actually rose by 21% when compared to 2010.
However, total production regionwide was still extremely low, and BIASC President Bob Yoder said builders and local governments need to continue working together to encourage new housing, which economists believe must happen before the overall economy really begins to improve.
According to the CIRB, permits issued rose in four of the six counties but continued to drop in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, which have been especially impacted by the foreclosure crisis.
