Another Way to Look at Housing’s Hottest Markets in 2017

A good way to gauge activity in the residential construction market at the local level is to look at the number of single-family permits pulled per 1,000 residents. On a national basis, the 2017 ratio was 2.3 single-family permits per 1,000 residents. More than 30 Metropolitan Statistical Areas did twice that last year.  Many of these metros are in vacation areas or popular retirement destinations, particularly along the coast or in the mountains.

One market that surprised Electrical Marketing's editors was the California-Lexington Park, MD MSA in the Washington, DC suburbs. We had overlooked this metro in the past, but it had 10.3 permits per thousand, and 1,164 single-family permits.  Leading the list was The Villages, FL MSA, the largest retirement community in the country. The Top 5 MSAs were The Villages, FL (14.6); Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, SC-NC (14.3); California-Lexington Park, MD (10.3); Bend-Redmond, OR (9.6); and Boise City, ID (9.3).

To check out the permits/population ratio for all MSAs, click on the green box below that says "View Full List."

For insight into all 2017 building permit activity at the state and national level and a downloadable file of this data, click here.  And if you want to see this data in a map format, click here.