The Alabama Center for Real Estate (ACRE) recently released residential building permit figures. I have compiled the numbers and charted it as you can see below.
Click to enlarge
These figures keep track of permits issued for construction of new homes. As you can see from the chart, which covers May of 2007 through November 2010, the number of permits issued has been sporadic with the overall trend decreasing steadily over this 43 month period. This makes sense when you consider what has happened to the real estate market. When things began falling apart and demand decreased a lot of builders, especially the smaller ones, went out of business. Some of the larger companies have stayed in business but have laid low as far as starting new homes.
Recent data reports that there has been some increased activity in building permits being issued in the first two weeks of January 2011. If the real estate market in the Birmingham, Alabama metro area is to truly make a comeback consumer confidence will have to get better and the banks will have to make money more easily available to those wanting to purchase homes. Do you think 2011 will be a comeback year, or do you think it will take longer?
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I agree, great graph. What a drop from 1000 to 200! It looks it stabilized in 2010 until the end of the year when it started to trend downward again. I wonder what 2011 will bring?
One website is reporting that we had an up tic of about 50 permits in the first two weeks of January. Maybe this is a sign of good things to come, we’ll see.
Nice graph, Tom. Really well done.
Thanks Ryan. I find that a graph can help me picture and understand the data more easily.