Housing permits in Metro Denver up 18 percent in 2016

Housing permits in the Denver metro area increased 18 percent from 2015 to 2016, rising from 1,462 to 1,732 permits. As we can see in the first graph, this brings total permit activity back to levels similar to those found in 2004 and 2005, and well above what we saw during the recessionary period of 2008 and 2009:

As demand for both apartments and for-sale housing grew after 2009, we saw gradual increases in permit activity, and the permit total is now at a 14-year high. Permit totals have not been this high since 2002 when they reached 1,770. 

The composition of the permit total is very different today from what it was prior to 2007, however. As we see in the next graph, prior to 2007, the total number of single-family permits greatly outnumbered the number of multifamily permits. Since 2011, single-family and multifamily permits have been rather similar, with multifamily permits even exceeding single-family permits in 2012 and 2013. 

We can contrast this to the situation before 2007 when the very large numbers of new single-family permits from 1998 to 2005 were a factor in what became sizable declines in home prices from 2008 to 2010 that only made a quick turnaround on the back of massive federal monetary and fiscal stimulus in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Since then, the single-family market has remained well below its former peaks even though population growth continues as a sizable rate in Colorado. 

Much of this single-family activity has now been replaced by multifamily production. In fact, over the past five years, nearly half of new permits have been for multifamily housing, which is highly unusual:

Moreover, we see this show up in the homeownership numbers in Colorado. due in part to the boom in apartment building that has taken place since 2012, homeownership has gone into decline over the past decade. 

While homebuilders were quickly adding new supply, we saw the homeownership rate sit as historic highs above 70 percent. . 

Now, the housing focus has shifted more in the direction of multifamily, but overall permitting has  rebounded to 80 percent of where it was at the 2001 peak. Nevertheless, continuing growth in both home prices and rents suggests that there is still room for more housing production. 

Housing construction rising in Pueblo,but not by much

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 majority of this activity is in singlefamily homes, as the next graph shows. The red bars show where multifamily units were built in addition to singlefamily units. Small numbers of multifamily units were built in a number of months during 2008 and 2009. However, after 2009, multifamily units only register in six months of the more than 80 months that have passed since then. The last multifamily permitting that took place was in May 2015 when 62 units were permitted for a senior housing project known as Oakshire Trails.

Other than that, multifamily housing construction has been exceedingly rare in recent years.

Needless to say, the Pueblo area has not experienced the same sort of apartment demand that was notably strong in the metro Denver area from 2012 to around 2015.

Singlefamily housing has slowly come back since 2011, but gains have been slow and measured. Nevertheless, if we look just at singlefamily permits (excluding multifamily) for the period of Jan-July, we find that 2016's singlefamily activity is at an eight-year high:

Moreover, with the exception of the change from 2011-2012, the year-over-year increases for 2015-2016 was at a ten-year high through July of this year.

Colorado Springs permits hit four-year low

During December 2015, single-family permits in Colorado Springs were tied with January 2015 for the lowest level of permits reported since December 2011. There were 124 single-family permits reported during December 2015, which was the same amount reported during January 2015.

The first graph shows single-family permits, by month, over the past fifteen years:

During 2015, permits peaked during the summer, as usual, with 311 permits reported during July 2015.

For December, though, if we compare to other Decembers, in order to take seasonal factors into account, we find that December 2015 was the least active December in four years:

December's numbers are not enough to suggest a downward trend in themselves, although the trend since 2012 has rather clearly been a flat one, with little movement up or down.

Nevertheless, sedated permit activity may be reflecting lackluster job growth that has been a factor in the local economy.

Multifamily Permits 

But what about multifamily permits? Multifamily activity is so sporadic from month to month, it's difficult to see much from monthly data, but with the end of 2015, we now have annual data for 2015. Looking at the year as a whole, we find that 2015's multifamily-family permit total was the lowest recorded since 2012, and is thus at a four-year low:

2015's multifamily development appears to come from a single project.

Not surprisingly, we also see that the average rent in Colorado Springs has been heading upward in recent quarters as little growth in new supply leads to a squeeze on existing housing supply. A lack of solid growth in single-family construction will contribute to this as well.

There are no dramatic trends to identify here, although it does not appear that the Colorado Springs economy is something we would call "robust." For now, the housing economy in the region shows signs of holding steady, although continued declines in job growth growth will lead to declines for housing demand in the region.

(All permit data is from the US Dept. of Commerce.)

Are more twenty-somethings living at home in Colorado?

Household formation has long been an issue central to the demand for real estate. If people move out of their parents homes and create a new household, then a new housing unit will be demanded. If two people move out, and get one unit together then one new unit will be created out of two. If both people can afford to get their own apartments, then two new units will be created out of two.

Economic prosperity has long been connected to economic prosperity. If incomes are low, or housing costs are high, people will either stay at home or take on additional roommates to afford housing. If wages are high or housing costs are low,  more people will demand more units. This is moderated, of course, by people cohabiting for romantic/family reasons, such as marriage. In that case, two households will reduce to one even when economic times are good. 

Nevertheless, on the whole, there is reason to believe that when incomes and economic prosperity increase,  people tend to demand more housing units.

Are Young People Now Too Poor to Move Out? 

Last year, the New York Fed published an analysis on how many 25-year olds were living with their parents.  Here are their results: 

In 2003, between 20 and 30 percent of twenty-five-year-olds lived with their parents (using our measure) in twenty-five of the forty-eight states. By 2013, all forty-eight states had parental co-residence rates of more than 30 percent. Indeed, for twelve states, the parental co-residence rate for twenty-five-year-olds had risen above 50 percent. Four states—Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Vermont—saw the rate at which twenty-five-year-olds live with their parents increase by more than twenty percentage points between 2003 and 2013. Parental co-residence was highest in Mid-Atlantic and Southern states in 2003, but by 2013 it was highest in the Northeast and Midwest. 

So, for the period of 2003-2013, there was indeed an increase in the number of people living at home. Here's what it looked like in 2003.  Colorado is in the 20%-30% range: 

But, by 2013, here's what it looked like. Colorado is in the 30%-40% range: 

In both cases, Colorado is ranked among the states with the fewest 25-year olds living at home. 

The NY Fed report goes on: 

Parental co-residence increased steadily for both age groups from at least 2003 through 2012, followed by a leveling off or slight decline in 2013. The chart also shows one measurement of household formation—homeownership—which has been decreasing for both twenty-five- and thirty-year-olds since 2007, the end of the housing bubble and the start of the Great Recession. While thirty-year-olds were twice as likely to own a home as they were to live with their parents in 2003, we find that they were equally likely to own a home or live with their parents in 2013. 

So what are the reasons for this? The report attempted to address that too: 

Our results demonstrate that local economic growth is a mixed blessing when it comes to building youth independence: Improvement in youth employment conditions enables young people to move away from their parents, but rising local house prices are estimated to have forced many young people to move back home. These two effects partially offset each other. 
However, the relationship we observe between rising student debt and co-residence with parents is clearer. The chart below presents a state-level scatter plot of the change in the rate of living with parents from 2008 to 2013 against the change in average student debt per graduate. 

It reveals a clear positive correlation between a state’s student debt growth and the rate at which its twenty-five-year-olds live with their parents. The regression line in the chart indicates that a $10,000 increase in student debt per graduate in the state is associated with an additional 2.9 percentage point rise in the rate of living with parents. (Estimates in the staff report that account for changes in the local economy and other factors tell a similar story.) 

So how does Colorado compare in terms of student debt? Fortunately for us, the Dallas Fed released a 2014 report on this, and the map looks like this: 

In Colorado, the mean (average) balance was $26,215, which puts it at 16th highest nationwide. 

Based on this statistic alone, then, we'd expect Colorado to have high rates of people living at home. But that's not the case. Colorado has  some of the lowest rates of people living at home. As a possible explanation, we might look to the fact that that Colorado has the 12th highest median income among the states. 

According to Census data, Colorado household median income was $60,940 in 2014, which put it above the national median household income of $53,657. (The highest state median income was found in Maryland at $76,165.)

Colorado may have relatively high student debt, but it's incomes may be  factor in making up for that. Moreover, in this case we're looking at average student debt and median incomes. The median incomes suggest that the incomes reflect a relatively typical income level.  It's why we often prefer the median over the average. But, the student debt level here is an average which means it could be skewed  up by a small number of people with very large debt levels. From this we might conclude it is indeed plausible that, at least in the case of Colorado, student is not the dominating factor in the growth of living at home. 

Related post: "A Better View of Poverty Rates: We Must Consider the Cost of Living." 

Denver-area multifamily housing permits peaked back in 2014

Measured in new building permit activity, multifamily building in the Denver-aurora metropolitan area appears to have peaked in 2014, and has been slowly declining since.

Using the Census Bureau's residential building permit data for this metro, we can look at how many permits were for buildings with more than one housing unit. In other words, this data is NOT for single-family houses, although townhouses are included. (This also includes for-purchase condos, so we're not talking only of apartments here.)

Since month-to-month swings are so large for these types of units, I've put it together looking at three-month moving averages (includes data up through December 2015). All the graphs in this article are for the Denver-Aurora metro area:

What we see here is that the 3-month average through December 2015 was 500 units which was down from the 3-mo average for November 2015, which was 713. This is all down from the peak of 983 units reached during October of 2014. Overall, we do appear to be seeing a slow downward trend that's been in place since the fall of 2014.

Generally, permit activity remains above what it has been over the past decade, although not equaling the huge multifamily housing boom that occurred at the very end of the dot-com boom back in 2001-2002.

Measuring the percent change year over year, we find that December's three-month average was down 37 percent, year over year. That's the largest drop recorded since August 2010, or 65 months ago:

In fact, 8 of the past months have shown negative growth by this measure, suggesting multifamily builders are definitely pulling back from the big-growth period that lasted from 2010 to 2013.

Building permits can be seasonal as well, although multifamily tends to be less season than single-family. However, let's look at the totals separated out by month so we can better take seasonal factors into account.

Looking at the 3-month average for December 2015 we see that the month's total of 500 was the lowest December total in 4 years, coming in behind the December total for 2012, 2013, and 2014. We find a similar trend with September and August, which were both also at a 4-year low. October 2015 was at a 3-year low for that month, and November was at a 2-year low for that month.  Overall, we can say that the second half of 2015 shows real declines in overall multifamily permitting activity.

The most recent vacancy and rent data for the metro area suggested that demand is softening, with the vacancy rate hitting a six-year high. There were questions about whether or not the industry had overbuilt. It's possible, although, even with condos included in this data, it seems that the industry has already been in the process of winding down from peak levels for more than a year. 

Chart of the Day: Case-Shiller Home Price Index surges in metro Denver in early 2015

There is reason to suspect that nationwide, home prices may be leveling out. But that certainly doesn't appear to be the case for metro Denver. In the February Case-Shiller index, released in late April, Denver showed the highest year-over-year change in the index (10%), beating out even San Francisco (9.8%). The first graph show's Denver index compared to the 20-city composite index:

It is apparent that the metro Denver index has already well-exceeded its old peak reached during 2007. In fact, the Denver index is now up 14 percent from its former peak. The 20-city index, on the other hand, is still down 16 percent from the 2006 peak.

Fluctuations in the index has generally been less severe in the Denver index than in the composite index, as can be seen in the second graph. In recent months, we see that as the composite index has moderated, the Denver index has shown an acceleration in home prices, and has even reached the largest rate of increase seen in more than a decade.

If we isolate the Denver index a little more and zoom in, we see just how much the index surged in February. The Denver index had been moderating a little, but then increased substantially from January to February.

But why is this? As mentioned in my post on single-family units, home construction in Colorado (and also metro Denver if we look at that separately (new permitting is at 1992 levels), so the continued demand of new residents and new households continues to drive the price up. Obviously, the typical household did not see a 10 percent increase in wages to match the 10 percent increase in home prices, so concerns about affordability (and bubbles) endure.

Chart of the Day: Is the multifamily construction boom in Colorado tapering off?

The March totals for multifamily permits in Colorado are now available from the Dept. of Commerce.. In March 2015, there were 1,196 new multifamily units permitted. During the same month of last year, there were 1,608 units permitted, which means multifamily units were down, year over year, by 25 percent. As we can see in the first chart, multifamily construction is up considerably from where it was in 2009, and is now at about mid-90s levels, which is a pretty robust pace.

Although they has been talk of immense amounts of building, total construction may be flattening out. If we look at year over year percentage growth, we see that the change in multifamily units was either negative or at zero for eight of the last 12 months. Over the past five months, it's all been flat or downhill. 

I've reduced the time frame for a better look at the last few years in the third graph. The trend here suggests a plateau in multifam construction. Why this should be the case is not immediately obvious. Rent growth continues to be strong with first quarter rent growth some of the strongest ever recorded. On the other hand, with the market so frothy, developers may be encountering supply-side issues such as continued increases in costs and the availability of labor and material. In any case, the enormous increases in new construction seen from 2011 to 2013 appear to be over. 

Chart of the Day: Singlefamily unit growth holding steady, but at fairly low levels

March 2015 data for private housing units show that, overall, housing unit production continues to climb in both singlefamily and multifamily industries. At this time, however, there is no danger of new construction reaching anything like the levels seen during the housing bubble of 2003-2007. The first graph shows the last two economic cycles in terms of new units permitted. We can see that, while numbers are up considerably since the trough in 2009, they remain at levels more comparable to the early 1990s. Of course, if we account for population size, new construction is then lower than the early 1990s in practical terms.

What do we see in terms of percentage growth? Singlefamily permit activity has largely flattened out. In January, the YOY change was negative at -4 percent, and over the past five months, growth has been under ten percent. Of course, this is still growth, so we shouldn't speak of singlefamily construction as if it has disappeared, but in a long term view, growth is fairly flat right now, and certainly, if we consider the high rates of home price growth, we can guess that the market could easily bear more home construction. So why is there so little? Uncertainty in the marketplace and among wage earners could be a factor, as might be the fact that the multifamily market is employing many of the resources that might have gone to singlefamily in a different type of market.

And speaking of multifamily units, have a look back at the first graph and note that the gap between singlefamily and multifamily units has disappeared. If you saw this and though, "gee, it looks like there are far more multifamily units — proportionally — being produced than usual," then you would be right. The last graph shows that over the past 25 years, multifamily construction has rarely been much more than 30 percent of all units. But if we look at the market since 2011, we find that this proportion is commonly over 40 percent, with even a few months reaching over 50 percent. This is a change in the general habit of the local market, and reflect nationwide changes in trends in which home ownership is falling and many households are opting for rentals for a variety of reasons.