TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online
Builder Permits In County Fall To 7-Year Low
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: March 11, 2008
Updated: 03/10/2008 09:46 pm
TAMPA - Builders pulled fewer permits to build homes in Hillsborough County in 2007 than in the past seven years, and the fourth quarter was particularly slow. Both are signs that builders are braced for a fairly quiet year.
"This means the building you see now is based on sales made months and months ago," said Suzi Dieringer, economic research manager for the Hillsborough Planning Commission, which tracks permit activity. "It doesn't look like we'll see a lot of new construction starting over the next few months."
There were about 8,000 residential permits issued countywide in 2007, compared with 17,000 permits in 2005, the height of the local building boom, Dieringer said.
In unincorporated Hillsborough County, where builders converted acres of farmland into thousands of new homes over the past several years, just 4,200 residential permits were issued in 2007. That's a decline of 55 percent, compared with 9,200 permits in 2006.
In the fourth quarter of 2007 there were 1,534 residential permits, compared with 3,251 during the same quarter a year ago.
The city of Tampa saw a 14 percent decrease in single-family housing permits in 2007, and the majority of Tampa's residential permits were for apartments, Dieringer said.
"What's happening in the city is not detached single-family," she said. "Developers are filling the need for multifamily units."
Hillsborough County is not in a vacuum.
Builders in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties slashed construction by 59 percent in 2007, compared with 2006, according to Metrostudy, a Houston-based housing research firm. Builders broke ground in the five-county area on 50 percent fewer homes in the fourth quarter of 2007, compared with a year ago.
Metrostudy counted 3,551 finished, vacant homes in the five-county area in the fourth quarter. Those homes are owned either by the builder or by investors and have never been lived in.
Reporter Shannon Behnken can be reached at (813) 259-7804 or sbehnken@tampatrib.com.
TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online Member Agreement | Privacy Statement | Work With Us
