multi-family construction leading nation's home building industry

The first quarter of 2018 has started out promising with a 14.4 percent jump in new multi-family home construction projects nationally.

According to data compiled by the Washington-based National Association of Home Builders and the Wells Fargo Company of San Francisco, home building permits have also seen an increase from January to March of this year, rising by 2.5 percent over the final quarter of 2017.

Overall, residential starts, meanwhile, are up by 1.9 percent in the last three months.

The only area of decline was seen in single-family home projects which, according to the report, declined nationally from 900,000 to 867,000.

Even so, that 867,000 figure is up from just two years ago in March of 2016 when it stood at 748,000.

Multi-family starts, at the same time, are at their highest point since the beginning of 2017.

Such numbers, said chief NAHB economist Robert Dietz in a statement, are “still in line with our solid building confidence readings and is largely attributable to lingering winter weather that is causing production delays in certain areas of the country.”

By Garry Boulard