D-FW Tops U.S. in Residential Building
Dallas-Fort Worth topped the country for residential construction last year, but the rate of home and apartment construction growth in North Texas is slowing.
The D-FW area, Houston and New York City had the most building permits for new homes, apartments and condominiums in 2018, according to a study by Fixr, an online home improvement information firm. The new study compared residential building permits last year in the 20 largest U.S. metro areas. D-FW leads the country in both apartment and single-family home construction with more than 63,400 building permits.
But in 2018, the increase in residential building permits in the area was only 1.43%, according to Fixr. At the same time, the Houston area had a 34.5% jump in residential building activity due in part of the impact of recent storms in the area.
Construction in the Orlando area had the biggest gain — up 51.5% from 2017 levels.
"Thirteen of the top 20 metropolitan areas [in the study] reported positive growth in new residential building permits issued," Fixr's report said. "However, looking at the demand for permits across the country, over the last 10 years there has been a downward trend from the high of 32.94% in 2012, ending at a fairly unimpressive, overall increase in permits of only 2.80% in 2018."
Through the first four months of 2019, starts of new residential projects in the D-FW area are down 11 percent from the sale period last year, according to the latest estimates from Dodge Data & Analytics...
