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San Francisco Wins the Homebuilding Race

San Francisco has been known to have an acute shortage of housing inventory. But the Golden Gate City surprised its critics by nearly doubling its historic average number of permits for new homes in its efforts to combat its affordability crisis, according to a study by Trulia, that looked at cities across the U.S. that were building at a hectic pace in 2017.

For this study, Trulia utilized U.S. building permit data on the number of permits issued annually between 1980 and 2016, and for 2017. It then compared the latter to the annual average of the former to calculate how well each metro was building homes relative to its historical average.

Based on historical average, the study found that San Francisco built more new homes than any other city in 2017, having approved 94.6 percent more homes in 2017 than its average between 1980-2016. A large share of these was for multifamily units which should help rents to stabilize in one of the most expensive housing markets of the country, the study indicated.

Coming in second and third were Austin and Massachusetts having built 79.5 percent and 72.4 percent more than their historic averages respectively.

In terms of the total number of homes built though, Dallas beat all other cities for building new homes having approved over 47,000 new homes in 2017. Houston and New York finished second and third in this category building 42,673 and 40,687 new homes respectively, the study indicated.

The analysis showed that together, just three Texas metros - Dallas, Houston and Austin - built over 115,000 new homes in 2017, which means nearly one in ten of all permits across the U.S. At the bottom of this list were Worcester, Massachusetts; Allentown, Pennsylvania; and Hew Haven, Connecticut that built only 347, 408, and 467 new homes respectively.

How did your city fare in the race for Homebuilding? Click here.

About Author: Radhika Ojha

Radhika Ojha, Online Editor at the Five Star Institute, is a graduate of the University of Pune, India, where she received her B.A. in Commerce with a concentration in Accounting and Marketing and an M.A. in Mass Communication. Upon completion of her master’s degree, Ojha worked at a national English daily publication in India (The Indian Express) where she was a staff writer in the cultural and arts features section. Ojha also worked as Principal Correspondent at HT Media Ltd and at Honeywell as an executive in corporate communications. She and her husband currently reside in Dallas, Texas. You can contact her at [email protected].
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