Signs of Life
For the past three years, a curious feature has been added to the landscape of Washington: the subdivision with no houses.
Streets, cul-de-sacs, curbs with cutouts for driveways, light posts, utility boxes—all the features of a standard suburban housing development would be in place, except for the houses.
Or perhaps one house, standing by its lonesome amid dozens of vacant lots. Those house-free subdivisions were merely the most obvious physical evidence of the collapse of new home construction in this state.
More evidence can be found in the data. While locales such as Las Vegas, Nev., got much of the national attention for the housing industry’s precipitous decline, Washington didn’t escape the damage. Data compiled by the U.S. Department of Commerce and Washington State University’s Washington Center for Real Estate Research (WCRER) show a statewide slump of 69 percent in single-family building permits from 2005 to 2009. In some places, the tumble was even worse—nearly 72 percent in King County, for example.
Still more evidence can be found in the list of Washington banks that failed during the recession. Many loaded up on land development and residential real estate construction financing, on which borrowers defaulted when the market fell apart and homes didn’t sell.
But after a long and brutal winter for the home construction industry, there are signs that spring is arriving metaphorically as well as literally.
Look at the statistics: In the first nine months of 2010, single family building permits in Washington were up 20 percent from a year ago. In King County, when you also include multi-family construction, permits were up 163 percent.
The warming trend is also evident in announcements builders and developers are making. Pulte Group, one of the nation’s largest housing developers, bought residential lots and other undeveloped land at Snoqualmie Ridge, a large master planned community in King County, from a joint venture of Quadrant Homes (a Weyerhaeuser subsidiary) and the Murray Franklyn Family of Companies.
Pope Resources, the Poulsbo-based timberland management and property development company, said it had received regulatory approval for its Harbor Hill project in Gig Harbor, with plans for 554 single-family homes on the 200-acre site. That approval means the project is “poised to react to improving market conditions,” the company reported in its announcement.
On the other side of the state,
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