New Home Starts Continue to Look Up
June of 2012 has shown a serious climb in the frequency of housing starts in the United States. With a 6.9% increase in June to a seasonally adjusted 760,000, no higher level had been achieved over the past three and a half years since October of 2008, according to the Commerce Department. Just on our local level in Massachusetts, we reported in a past blog the details about how single-family and condominium pending home sales increased for the fourteenth straight month in a row looking at year-over-year monthly statistics. Clearly, it is not just our markets experiencing such positivity when it comes to Real Estate, and that is a wonderful thing for the nation as a whole.
Single-family home statistics exceeded experts expectations for the month of June when this segment of the market also improved by 4.7% to 539,000 new homes. This, it was then determined, was the highest numbers for single-family properties since March of 2010. The second half of 2011 is when these home starts truly began to once again takeoff, with the past six months being the most impressive. For multifamily homes, the past eighteen months is where we can definitively say construction on these properties made the turnaround as well.
Construction certainly is on the up. From our blog about average new home sizes growing to another about the boost in commercial construction to yet a final blog determining that home construction has increased by 30% over the past year here in Massachusetts, there is a great deal to get excited about. Across the nation we are seeing a 36.9% increase in housing starts out West, 22.2% increase here in the Northeast, a 4.2% increase in the South and a 7.3% drop in the Midwest. Compared to 2011, there has been already pre-set expectations of 765,000 new homes to be built this year which would exceed the 612,000 from last year.
The job market is a very crucial reason for these successes in the construction industry of late. The past two years alone have seen some four million or so jobs added to the economy nationwide. In terms of total economic growth into this year, about 0.25% of the total 2% of anticipated growth in the US economy should come from new home construction. The stability of home prices, strengthening economy and low interest rates are all reasons that individuals are starting to purchase new properties with this added trust they have in the current and future Real Estate market.
More Information: USA Today
