The most recent banking troubles, rising inflation, and prohibitive mortgage rates are some of the issues affecting the housing market at the moment. And the latest data supports the fact that the market is losing momentum: While the number of completed units has increased every year since 2012, permits and housing starts are dropping nationwide. Colorado follows the trend, with a Y-o-Y drop in permits of -13.32%.
To get a deeper understanding of how housing construction and construction employment trends evolved over the past decade in Colorado and not only, Point2 analyzed historical data on permits, completed and started units, along with employment, incomes, and business data. The report is accompanied by an extensive resource page highlighting the Y-o-Y changes in residential construction over the last decade in all the states and 384 U.S. metros.
Findings for Colorado show that:
- In 2015, the state surpassed the 30,000 permits threshold and now ranks eighth for the highest total number of permits issued in 2022: 48,995. Texas, Florida, and California top this list;
- Colorado is also in the top 10 states which boast the highest number of permits for single-family homes: 23,965 permits issued in 2022;
- Zooming in to the metro level, Colorado Springs ranks seventh in the top 10 medium metros with the highest number of permits in 2022 (8,818), despite seeing a slight Y-o-Y decrease (close to -6%) in the number of permits;
- However, almost all Colorado metros recorded Y-o-Y decreases in the number of permits issued in 2022 compared to 2021 when these were higher. The number of permits issued in the state’s largest metro, Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, decreased by -21.78%. In the same metro, the number of permits for multifamily buildings doubled in 2021 (16,028), only to slightly drop in 2022 (12,804);
- Smaller metros like Pueblo, Grand Junction, and Fort Collins saw similar drops in the number of permits from 2021 to 2022: -33.02%, -21.28% and -19.37%, respectively;
- Two small metros go against the trend: in Boulder, despite a drop of -24.30% in 2021, the number of permits issued increased by 31.04% in 2022, while in Greeley, permitting activity grew by 25.88% in 2021 and saw a smaller increase of 16.5% in 2022. Permits for multi-family buildings, however, more than doubled in the latter small metro;
- At 10.52%, the share of construction employees in Greeley is the highest of all the Colorado metros. Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood metro has the highest number of construction employees in Colorado, going from 62,114 in 2012 to more than 100,000 in 2022.
Check out the full set of data and accompanying visuals HERE
