Apartment Production Up Strongly Year Over Year via NAHB Eye on Housing

The Census Bureau’s preliminary estimate for starts in buildings with five or more apartments in July came in at 229,000 units (at a seasonally adjusted annual rate), up 9.6 percent from the revised figure for June (revisions to the May and June numbers were minor).

The 3-month moving average has been very stable, hovering between 205,000 and 210,000 for the past quarter. Production in this range is a substantial improvement over the roughly 100,000 five-plus starts recorded in 2009 and 2010, or even the 167,000 last year. The industry was consistently hitting production targets in the neighborhood of 300,000 a year for the entire decade of 1997-2006, however, so there still appears to be substantial room for improvement before apartment construction returns to a long-run sustainable rate.

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