A Quick Look at State-By-State Building Permit Data

Building permit data provides a barometer of the development market, which is a reflection of development processes and planning regimes. The arc of the country's housing construction trends bends toward Texas.

June 7, 2017, 5am PDT | James Brasuell | @CasualBrasuell

Christian Delbert

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The U.S. Census Bureau took to Twitter yesterday to share data on residential building permits in 2016, calling attention to the state of Texas' position as the leader in private home development. Specifically, Texas permitted 165,583 residential units—106,511 of which were single units.

#Texas led the way in residential building permits in 2016 w/ 165,853 new privately owned housing units authorized: https://t.co/EaBiRiRxx3 pic.twitter.com/FJEBezUyCK

— U.S. Census Bureau (@uscensusbureau) June 6, 2017

The data released also contains a few helpful nuggets to put the construction in Texas in perspective: the entire country permitted 1,206,642 unites in 2016. Behind Texas were Florida, with 116,240 total units, and California, with 102,350 total units. New York permitted a surprisingly low figure of 33,711 total units.

The U.S. Census Bureau followed the permits data tweet with more data that offer other perspective's on the residential development market.

The seasonally adjusted annual rate of new private residential #construction for Feb 2017 was estimated to be $497b https://t.co/wvWS4lxYtm pic.twitter.com/eGZdBzvYyi

— U.S. Census Bureau (@uscensusbureau) June 6, 2017