Twin Cities Home Construction Still Slow

Construction activity in the Twin Cities metro area is still very slow.  In fact, new home construction is limping along at about half the pace of last year, according to data released last week by the Builders Association of the Twin Cities.

During July, 255 permits were issued to build 650 units. That's a 42 percent decline in the number of permits and a 33 percent decline in the number of new units. So far this year, the number of permits and planned units were down nearly 50 percent.

It’s not that new houses have stopped selling, but home builders have basically stopped building homes that haven't already been sold.  Right now, they're focused on reducing inventories of unsold houses that were built during the housing boom.

A report from Metrostudy, a company that tracks housing inventories, shows that, during the second quarter of this year, the number of new unsold houses was down 32 percent compared with the same time last year, leaving the supply of unsold homes at 3.8 months.

More than a third of the planned units last month were to build two large multi-unit buildings in Bloomington, which hasn't made an appearance on the top-five list all summer.