By Jann Swanson | Mortgage News Daily
So what is going on with residential construction? We hear constantly that inventories are too tight, especially at the lower price levels, new home sales keep rising, yet four years after home prices bottomed out, new residential construction is only about half what it was at the peak of the housing boom.
At the same time, private residential construction spending in July increased only 0.3 percent (much of it apparently going to home improvements) and spending on new single-family homes has fallen for each of the last five months, by 0.2 percent in July, and is now only 1.7 percent higher than a year ago. Spending on multi-family construction was also down by 0.6 percent but remains nearly 20 percent higher than last year.
