SoCal is hot again when it comes to home building. It's not quite the 2000-aughts, but it's getting there. The Orange County Register reports:
Southern California builders are putting a dent in the regional housing shortage, selling new homes at a pace not seen in nine years.
CoreLogic data shows 18,117 new residences sold in the 12 months ended in May across the four counties covered by the Southern California News Group. That’s the best performance since January 2009, and it’s up 7.7 percent in a year.
This means new housing’s share of sales also grows. Builders were responsible for 8.1 percent of all Southern California home purchases in the past year. That’s the highest share of sales since March 2009.
Still, the upswing looks sluggish compared with housing development before the Great Recession.
From 2000 through 2006, Southern California builders were selling homes more than twice as fast as today at a 43,000 units-a-year pace. (Don’t forget one reason for recently modest homebuilding — that last development frenzy ended badly when real estate’s bubble burst.)
