Why are we Building New Homes??

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has sent out some interesting statistics regarding this past October. The statistics are about new residential construction in regards to permits, new construction starting and actual home completions.

About 550,000 privately owned houses were permit authorized by the government, which is a .5% increase since September. About 406,000 of these permits were single family homes, which is a .5% increase since September. In addition, 519,000 new construction starts were issued in October, a decrease of 11.7% since September.

With all that in mind, there were 613,000 actual houses completed this past October. This sounds good until we realize that is a 3.2% decrease since September and a whopping 18.4% decrease since October, 2009. So why are we building more homes if the actual completion rate is dropping?

Sure, it says that new construction starts have decreased since September, but the fact of the matter is that they are still being produced in large numbers. The authorization permits are increasing yet actual completions are dropping steadily. The government is authorizing more homes to be built yet many are left as empty, unfinished shells only dropping the value of the neighborhoods they sit in.

This also brings up the unrelenting discussion about the homes that already stand unfinished or vacant. There are more than 19 million houses standing vacant in the US so why are we not paying attention to these houses? Perhaps we should spend more money and effort on home restoration instead of home building.