Housing Starts Indicating a Slowing Trend

For the third consecutive straight month with the May report it shows signs a future shortage of houses. A recent report from the Commerce Department indicated housing starts which had a 2.7 monthly decline in April and a 7.7 drop in March show a 5.5% drop in May. Although home construction is up 3.2% year to date. News reports indicate optimism in sales from home builders, yet the overall number of homes for sale has shown a steady decline over the last two years. Another major real estate indicator is building permits. That number has drop precipitously 5% to just over 1 million nationwide. We don’t have the local numbers in Los Angeles County, but found that the Wells Fargo builder sentiment index is 67. This is a positive number as any reading above 50 is a positive number and that number has been well above 50 for the last nine months.

Housing Tentative Tract Maps Denied and One Requesting Extension

The city of Lancaster is looking into an one year extension of a tentative tract map for zoned R-7000 at 60th West at J-8. It is a 12.6 acre lot and the proposal is to build 49 homes on the site. The tentative tract map applicant Royal Investors Group is requesting a one year extension. This group is not a home builder but a map builder, so it is not likely that any homes will be on this site anytime soon. United Engineering groups tentative tract map at 30th East at Ave K was approved to deny the request for a one year extension based on lack of findings in the staff report. This subdivision was set to be on 26 acres with a proposal to build 45 single family homes on the site. It is currently zoned R-10,000 or one house per 10,000 square feet. So no money or interest in building new homes hear. This is on top of the report today that the National Association of Home Builders index rose 1 point to 61, its highest level since November 2005. The builders or the map builders have been planning for housing development in Lancaster, but not anytime soon or at least for these two mappers. We have reported housing development about a year ago, but it looks to be still over the horizon for some builders.