Mountain Housing Starts Plummet
The Herald chose not to compare this trend with national or comparable averages, and Jackson County Planning Director Linda Cable noted that building starts here in general are above national average.
The Asheville Citizen reports today, however, that a survey by a Knoxville firm shows new housing starts off some 47% in a ten-county western North Carolina area in the first quarter of 2008.
The story goes on to give some needed context, noting that the drop takes us back to levels that were common prior to the much-ballyhooed “mortgage bubble.”
“These numbers are not horrible. We’re just basically moving back to a normal level of production,” Dale Akins, President of Knoxville’s The Marketing Edge, a construction industry research company, told the Citizen.
The decline does not yet appear to have caused a major drop in construction employment, according to state figures. Some work may have shifted to construction of apartment complexes or other projects.
Housing starts in the same 10-county area declined by 13.7% in 2007.
The Citizen does not give a county-by-county breakout.
In our post on the 19th, we continued:
With the explosion of second home building (and third, and fourth, and fifth) in the county in the past decade, along with growth at Western Carolina University, we’re seeing an interesting dynamic–one that’s familiar in western states, but not so much here: a significant lack of middle income housing.
New faculty members at the university, for example, have a hard time finding housing that suits them. Some commute from as far away as Asheville.
This factor, along with national trends toward a preference for higher-density neo-urban lifestyles across all age groups, has Sylva leaders looking at ways to encourage growth in their town. As it stands, outdated zoning ordinances don’t allow for development at sufficient densities to provide a return on developers’ investments. New housing starts, therefore, have been stagnant in town limits during the past decade.
Tags: Asheville Citizen Times, Sylva Herald
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