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Through July of this year, the Pueblo area reported 156 permits for private housing units. That's an increase of 13.3 percent compared to 2015, although overall permitting activity is up from the low points experienced in the wake of the 2007-2009 recession. (All permit data used in this article is form the Census Bureau.) The first graph shows total permit activity for each year for the period of January-July: While permits are down this year compared to last, they are nonetheless up compared to every year in the period from 2011-2014. Over the past decade, only three years showed increases over the previous year. The second graph shows year-to-year change in permits for the period from January-July (values are in %): Most of the past decade has reflected an experience of declining permit activity from the housing-bubble highs prior to 2008. A significant decline began in 2007 and the area really didn't begin to show signs of life again until 2015. The vast majo...

With new apartment vacancy data coming out for Colorado Springs, it may be helpful to take a look at household formation versus new unit construction in the Colorado Springs area. For now, we only have data up through mid 2014, but we can get a sense of the overall trend. (These numbers are from the Colorado Demography Office and are based on population and household data. The total household number is based on occupied housing unit data, and the housing unit data originates with the US Commerce Dept., and includes both single-family and multifamily.) In 2014, new household formation and new housing units were fairly even matched.We can see that both increased by about 1.25 percent. Specifically, housing units increased by 1.2 percent while households increased by 1.3 percent (for Colorado Springs): Not all years are as evenly, matched, though. We can see back in 2010 there was a lot more household growth than there was new unit construction. Back in 2003, there was a lot ...