Dive Brief:

• It is apartment buildings, not single-family homes, leading the charge in seven of the 10 areas where residential construction is growing the strongest, according to an analysis buy real estate firm Trulia.
• Trulia turned the first six months' issuance of building permits into an annualized number and compared that with the average annual figure from 1999 to 2013.
• The top 10 places for residential building permits this year – those that are farthest above the average – are, in order: Boston; New York; San Jose, California; Houston, Texas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Orange County, California; Austin, Texas; Dallas; San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Dive Insight:

Trulia's chief economist, Jed Kolko, said the list skews to the big-city metros because "multi-unit buildings – overwhelmingly built for renters – are an unusually high share of new construction in 2014, as the housing recovery is now creating more new renters than first-time homebuyers."