D-FW Commercial Building Starts Jump 41%
North Texas construction starts rose in November thanks to a surge in commercial building.
Construction in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was up 5% from November 2018 levels, according to a new report by Dodge Data & Analytics. More than $2 billion in building starts were recorded last month. Nonresidential building activity rose by 41% from 2018 with more than $1.1 billion in starts recorded.
D-FW residential building dropped by 22% from a year ago. The increase in nonresidential construction was enough to push total building activity for the month up 5% from year-ago levels, according to Dodge Data.
Nationwide construction activity rose 37% in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $988.9 billion. Most of the increase was in infrastructure building. “The presence or absence of large projects continues to add immense volatility to the monthly data,” Richard Branch, Chief Economist of Dodge Data and Analytics, said in the report. “However, the underlying trend for the year remains intact – that construction starts are settling back following nine consistent years of growth.”
Through the first 11 months of 2019, more than $20 billion in construction starts have been recorded in the D-FW area. That’s down 3% from this time last year.
During all of 2018, about $22.2 billion in building starts were recorded in the D-FW — down from the record $24.6 billion in 2017, according to Dodge Data...
