California housing permit activity continued at a moderate pace in October. 9,607 permits were issued statewide, down 9 percent from September but up 18 percent from October 2018. The state has averaged about 9,500 units per month since April, a faster pace than the previous seven months (about 8,000) but slower than the period from March 2017 to August 2018 when it averaged more than 10,300 per month. In total, 90,759 permits have been issued in the first ten months of 2019, down 7 percent from 2018.
Multifamily housing permits returned to a normal level (4,368) in October after a one-month surge in September. Overall, multifamily permits over the first ten months of 2019 are down 8 percent from 2018, and have accounted for slightly less than half (43,970) of the state total.
October was the first month in 2019 in which single family housing permits exceeded the pace of the same month of 2018, although the total of 5,239 was right in line with the numbers from April to August. Through the first ten months of 2019 the state has recorded 46,789 single family permits, down 6 percent from 2018.
The town of Paradise that was devastated by fire in November 2018 has seen a big increase in single-family permit activity over the past six months, and hit a new high of 69 units in October. In the first four months after the fire, permits picked up in the remainder of Butte County, but since then the focus of activity has shifted to Paradise itself.
Data source: CIRB (Construction Industry Research Board), a service provided by the California Homebuilding Foundation http://www.mychf.org/cirb.html.