Dive Brief:
- Builder magazine has determined which metro areas had the highest home building activity— based on starts of single-family houses in the second quarter— by looking at the U.S. residential market through data collected and analyzed by its sister company, Metrostudy.
- The metros cluster in the South and West, though Chicago stood at No. 5 on the Top 10 list.
- The 10 were, in descending order: Reno, Nevada; the Rio Grande Valley, Southern California (both coastal and inland); Atlanta, Chicago, Nashville, Tennessee; St. George/Mesquite, Utah; Sarasota/Bradenton, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Naples/Fort Myers, Florida.
Dive Insight:
The reasons for the jump in single family starts in those areas were typically due to high demand and a healthy recovering market. Metrostudy has predicted a 6% rise in home construction this year and predicts a leap to 18% growth in 2015 based on the U.S. moving back toward a normal rate of household formation.