New home construction in the St Louis area is off to a good start for 2018 with a total of 326 building permits for new homes being issued during January for the 7-county St Louis area reported on by the Home Builders Association of Eastern Missouri. This permit activity in January represents an 11% increase over the activity in January 2017 when there were 293 new home permits issued. During the month of January 2018, 4 of 7 counties saw an increase in building permits from January 2017 (Jefferson County +26%, Franklin County +143%, Warren County +1%, St Louis City +371%) while the remaining 3 saw declines (St Louis County -25%, St Charles County -10%, Lincoln County -29%).
It takes more than a month for a trend…
Just like I often comment with regard to home prices and sales, looking at a single month of activity really does not paint the whole picture and, while it may be a good “leading-indicator” of where things are headed, it’s not going to accurately depict a trend. For this, I believe looking at the past 12-month period and comparing it to the prior 12-month period is more accurate. It takes into account the seasonal fluctuations that occur and adjust for unseasonal weather during a given month that could skew the data if just looking at a one-month period. The table belows the total building permits for the 12-month period ending January 31, 2018 and comparies that activity to the prior 12-month period for each of the 7-counties reported on. As you can see, five of the counties have a double-digit increase in new home building permits issued from the prior 12-month period while St Charles County shows a double-digit decline, and Lincoln County a slight decline.
New Home Building Permits- St Louis Area – January 2018
