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he State’s natural growth is leading to longer building cycles and shallower |
troughs, according to Jim Wood, the director at the Bureau and a long-time observer of the Utah’s construction industry. Utah has experienced a building boom, but it’s based on sound fundamentals. And the housing market, especially in the Salt Lake Valley, is catching up for lost ground rather than suffering from the speculative excesses that fueled home price frothiness in other Western cities like San Diego, Phoenix, and Las Vegas.
Numbers of permitted construction activity in Utah in 2006:
- Total new dwelling unit permits—26,322.
- A decline of 6.9 percent, tempered by the fact that residential valuation reached $5 billion, a 6.3 percent increase over 2005.
- Single-family homes—19,888 permits. A decline of 4.9 percent from the 2005 record, but still the second most permits ever in Utah.
- Multi-family housing including apartments and condominiums—5,658 permits. A decline of 13.8 percent from 2005. Nearly three-quarters of new multi-family housing units were condominiums, townhomes, duplexes and twin homes, a function of low interest rates.
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- Additions, alterations and repairs were up more than 30 percent over 2005 to $865 million. Since 2004 this sector has risen more than 80 percent!
Utah’s most urban counties…Weber and Davis counties on the north end of the Wasatch Front and Salt Lake and Utah counties on the south… comprise 76 percent of the Utah’s population and along with Washington County in the southwestern corner of the State account for the bulk of the State’s construction activity.
In those counties new single family homes permits breakout as follows:
- Utah County; 5,329
- Salt Lake County; 4,584
- Davis County; 2,471
- Washington County; 1,701
- Weber County; 964
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