Home construction growth slows in top manufacturing counties
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Major manufacturing areas in the US saw the rate of home construction decline year over year in the second quarter.
Homebuilding in the top manufacturing counties posted a 3.8% drop in single-family construction and a 4.1% drop in multifamily development annually, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Home Building Geography Index (HBGI).
“The analysis of the NAHB geographic tracking of home construction trends is a reminder of the challenges that the housing affordability crisis presents for larger markets, where a dearth of buildable lots and stricter zoning regulations are putting upward pressure on home prices,” said NAHB Chairman Greg Ugalde.
Housing markets in these counties represent 10.2% of the country’s single-family production output and 6.7% of multifamily construction. NAHB found that the rate of top counties with high shares of local manufacturing employment outdid the rest of the country in 2017.
“The HBGI data show that the manufacturing sector of the economy has been gradually losing steam since 2017 and there has been a corresponding drop in new home construction in counties where manufacturing employment is most concentrated,” NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz said. “This correlation indicates that as housing goes, so goes the economy.”
The HBGI measures building conditions across the country every quarter and utilizes county-level information about single-and multifamily permits to estimate housing construction growth in various urban and rural regions.
