Single-Family Home Building on the Rise

For a long time after the bubble burst and the housing market began to recover, multifamily housing starts dominated the market landscape. Now, however, the industry is beginning to see a change as single-family building is picking up steam while multifamily starts are beginning to fade.

As MarketWatch reports, there is still quite a long way to go, though. In 2006, single-family housing starts peaked at an annual rate of 1.8 million. At that same time, multifamily starts only had a pace of 423,000. Currently, single-family starts are only at about half of that earlier pace while multifamily construction has recovered to the tune of 87 percent of its earlier high.

Since 2009, when both single-family starts and multifamily starts hit rock bottom (rate of 53,000 for multifamily and 353,000 for single-family), multifamily starts have improved by 7.4 times while single-family starts have only doubled.

But builders are gaining confidence, and the latest forecasts predict single-family starts to reach 800,000 in 2016 and 900,000 in 2017. By June 2016, builders were on pace for 776,300 new single-family housing starts.

Meanwhile, multifamily housing starts are trending in the opposite direction, as Bank of America Merrill Lynch lowered its multifamily starts forecast down to 375,000. Starts averaged a pace of 366,7000 through June.

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