Investor Business Feature: Unprecedented Housing Growth?

There has been a lot of talk locally lately about what some are calling, “unprecedented growth”, in housing. It seems you cannot turn on the news without hearing a story about either the lack of housing or the push to slow housing and residential development down. Everyone is taking sides, but are we really getting to the heart of the matter?

First, let’s look at the numbers of residential attached and detached building permits pulled for new homes historically for the last 32 years, which is as far back as this data is reliably available. Building permits are the standard by which growth can be accounted for, as they signify each home or condo that was built.

Looking at the numbers we can see quickly that our growth over the last 16 years has been anything but “unprecedented”. In fact, it is right at 50% of the growth experienced in the previous 16 years. This is despite the growing migration South to our great state and area from other states who are seeing population decline, loss of industry and major tax deficits. If we do not want those things, then we must want growth. There is no such thing as a static environment. 

If we are successful at stopping growth, we will have successfully shut down the positive economics of our area. No new restaurants, declining health care options, no homes our kids can afford to live in or high quality employers to employ them, higher taxes, etc. If the goal of preventing growth is to preserve the character of the community as it stands now, and what we do is kill the community for those who have long called it home, what did we actually preserve?

Let’s reframe “unprecedented growth” as an opportunity to improve upon as opposed to a negative that divides us and shuts us down.