The Washington region sits in the middle of the pack when it comes to building enough housing – single-family and multi-family – to accommodate population growth, according to a new study.
In 2022, there were 3.3 multi-family-housing units and 1.8 single-family units receiving building permits per 1,000 population in the local region, according to new data released March 13 by Apartment List.
The combined total of 5.1 units per 1,000 residents for the D.C. region is less than a third of the level of housing in the pipeline in Austin, Texas, which leads the ranking, but the D.C. area is largely in line with the average 5.2 among the 50 largest U.S. metro areas that were included in the study.
The total number of housing units receiving permits for construction across the U.S. fell slightly last year, from 1.74 million in 2021 to 1.65 million in 2022, marking the first year that this figure has declined since 2009.
“The total number of building permits issued in 2022 was still higher than in any year from 2007 to 2020, but it continues to lag the peaks seen in the run-up of the 2000s housing bubble,” note analysts Chris Salvati and Rob Warnock. (The full report can be found at https://bit.ly/3llkqXT.)
Austin ranked number one in 2022, with 18.3 new units permitted per 1,000 residents. Austin has been long-lasting. Austin has now topped the ranking for six straight years, and has been among the top three every year since 2006.
The top-five list for 2022 was rounded out by Raleigh (14.9 permits per capita), Jacksonville (14.1), Orlando (10.7), and Houston (10.5). The bottom five: Hartford, Providence, Buffalo, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
The construction boom in Austin has been long-lasting. Austin has now topped the ranking of per-capita permitting activity for six straight years, and has been among the top three in every year since 2006.
While Austin’s current boom is certainly historic, it has a forebear: Las Vegas.
Sin City had the highest rate of per-capita permitting every year from 1990 to 2006, and in all but one of those years, it was building at a faster pace than Austin’s 2022 rate.
Activity in Las Vegas peaked in 1996, when the metro permitted 29.6 new units per-capita, far outpacing the rate of any other metro (Austin ranked #2 that year, but with a per-capita permitting rate that was just 56 percent that of Las Vegas).
But just as it led the way during the housing boom, Las Vegas also experienced the nation’s most severe bust when the bubble burst. Permitting activity in Las Vegas fell off a cliff in the late 2000s, bottoming out in 2011 with the total number of permits issued that year representing just 13 percent of the peak number issued in 2005.
Construction there has gradually picked back up, but the number of permits issued in 2022 was still just 33 percent of the 2005 level.
For 2022, a small number of the 50 localities – Austin and Kansas City among them – had relatively balanced numbers of permits in the single-family and multi-family sectors.
Metro areas where there were much more single-family permits issued: Nashville, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Houston, Oklahoma City. Communities with significantly more multi-family units in the pipeline: Richmond, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Minneapolis, Miami and San Antonio.
