Building Permits for Multi-Family Housing are way up!
The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metropolitan areas saw a decrease in single-family home starts, but a big jump in building permits for multifamily dwellings. These metropolitan areas saw a 35 percent drop in building permits issued for single-family homes during the month of June compared to the previous month. In June, builders pulled permits for 245 single-family homes, down from 377 in May. Multifamily housing starts, however, increased more than 366 percent, from 95 in May to 443 in June.
Layne Marceau, 2006 CBIA chairman and a Bay Area homebuilder, says housing seems to be returning to a "normal" market, where buyers have choices and sellers have to price their properties right in order to sell them. Because of the number of homes on the market, now is a great time to buy, he said.