News, insight and some thoughts about the Sacramento-area real estate market

« Crash on the northern frontier | Home Front main page | Kunstler: Suburbs, production builders aren't coming back »

May 27, 2008

Worst year in making for California builders since 1954

Last night, being Memorial Day, I watched part of "the Longest Day," the movie about the WWII D-Day landings that General Dwight D. Eisenhower directed against the Germans at Normandy. Now, today, that that brings to mind U.S. President Eisenhower who took office in 1953. That was one year before California began keeping records of how many houses and apartments its builders put up every year.

That's a very long time ago.

But in this year of our lives we'll likely see the fewest government permits to build new homes and apartments in California ever recorded during those 54 years.

•  Builders announced this themselves today.

•  There is also a gathering of statistics for individual metro areas.

  Builders always like to say the state needs more than 200,000 new dwellings a year to keep up with population growth and demand. This year looks like they'll do less than 80,000.
 
Statewide,  the Yuba City-Marysville metro area saw California's biggest year-over-year drop in single-family home permits - 87 percent fewer in the first four months of 2008 than the same time last year.
   Posted by Jim Wasserman, May 27, 2008 1:38 PM