November 2021 New Residential Construction – Census Bureau

For November 2021 we see a 3.6% increase in total permits issued from October 2021. We also see a marginal 0.9% increase from last year. We continue to see single family housing permits decrease by -4.5% from this time last year, this leads us to believe that the single family market is cooling off. Combined with a 15% increase in permits issued for multi-family developments with 5+ units we believe investors are starting to come back to the market, taking pre-pandemic plans off the shelf. There has been a considerable increase in starts, up 11.8% from last month and 8.3% from last year. While both have grown by 11-12% the past month multi family starts have increased ~40% since last year while SFH have decreased by -0.8% single family starts reaffirming our hypothesis that single family construction is winding down and multi family winding up. 

At the end of November units under construction rose 2% from the end of October 2021. From November 2020 to November 2021 units under construction rose 19.2%. A 28.3% increase in single family starts and a 10.9% increase in multi-family starts. Completions have rose 4.1% from last month while rising 3.1% from last year. This is helped by sharp increases in multi-family completions both monthly and yearly and marginal decreases in the single family market both monthly and yearly.