Article Last Updated: 04/27/2007 07:04:03 AM PDT By Eve Mitchell, BUSINESS WRITER
Single-family housing construction picked up in the East Bay from February to March while condominium and apartment building soared in San Francisco, according to a building industry report released Thursday.
However, construction crews in the East Bay aren't swinging their hammers to build single-family homes as much as they did in March 2006, according to the monthly report issued by the California Building Industry Association.
The slowdown in single-family home building is in response to the cooling real estate market of the last couple years.
"Residential home builders to a large degree have reverted to a 'just-in-time' mentality that results in starting homes in line with current demand rather than being ahead of demand," Alan Nevin, the association's chief economist, said in a statement.
Condo building, however, is going strong in San Francisco.
In the San Francisco metro area, which includes San Mateo County, 330 multifamily permits were pulled last month. That's a huge 746.2 percent increase from the 39 pulled in February but a 58.9 percent decline from a year ago when 802 permits were pulled. All of the 330 multifamily permits pulled in March were in San Francisco, according to the Construction Industry Research Board, which provides the numbers for the association report.
In the entire San Francisco metro area, some 68 single-family permits were pulled, up 70 percent from February but down 16 percent from March 2006.
Multifamily housing starts tend to be more volatile than single-family housing starts. That's because when developers get local approval for a multifamily project, they tend to pull all permits at once. Each multifamily permit represents a single apartment, townhouse or condo unit.
In the East Bay, developers pulled 450 single-family building permits last month, up 23 percent from February but down 14.3 percent from March 2006. The East Bay had 320 multifamily starts in March, a 14.4 percent drop from February and a 9.9 percent decline from March 2006.
In San Joaquin County, 276 single-family permits were pulled, up 10.8 percent from February but down 36.3 percent from a year ago. The county actually saw zero multifamily permits pulled in March, compared with 21 in February and 53 a year ago.
Statewide, builders pulled 7,743 single-family permits in March, up 22.7 percent from February but down 31 percent from March 2006. Multifamily housing starts totaled 5,408 in March, up 70.8 percent from February but down 4.8 percent from March 2006. Total state building permits rose 38.8 percent from February to March, but fell 22.2 percent from March 2006 to March 2007.
