Housing Starts in State Gained 14.5% in April : Orange County Multifamily Building Rise Said to Account for Advance Over March

Housing production in California, as measured by building permits, increased by 14.5% in April from March, but declined by 11.6% from April of last year.

This was contained in a report by California Construction Review, a service of the Construction Industry Research Board.

All of the March to April increase was in multifamily housing which rose by 44.1%, most of it traced to a very large increase in Orange County from March to April. The county’s multifamily units rose from 914 in March to 2,298 in April.

The single-family sector is showing more strength than anticipated, the report said. Accordingly, the forecast for 1988 is revised upward to 127,000 units from the original forecast of 120,000.

Much of the relatively strong activity level in the single-family sector is the result of a substantial increase in Riverside County, where new single-family units totaled 7,589 in the first four months of 1988. That is up 79% from the same period last year.

Non-residential building totaled $4.1 billion in the first four months of 1988, up 4.7% from the same period in 1987. Discounting for inflation in construction costs, the dollar volume in the first four months of 1988 is nearly unchanged from the same period a year ago.