New home starts up 77 percent from last year

Posted by Kansas RealEstateRama

July 9, 2007

Kearney real estate developers, city officials and real estate agents have cause to smile this year after suffering through a poor year in new home construction in 2006.

Housing starts are up in Kearney 77 percent from last year at this time. This year 53 new building permits had been issued as of May 31. Last year that number was 30.

While building permits are up, certificate-of-occupancy permits are down 54 percent. This means that at this time last year, even though new houses weren’t going up, the ones sitting empty in town were being sold.

One reason for the low certificate-of-occupancy numbers could be that there are fewer new houses on the market now than there were last year at this time

Also, last year many houses that were sitting on the market were sold, some because of the influx of Ford employees moving to Kearney. The number of certificate-of-occupancy permits was higher than normal last year.

By Emily Hoffman. kccommunitynews.com

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