Palmdale Issues 30% of County’s House Permits

Rushing to beat new city fees, developers in fast-growing Palmdale obtained permits to build a record 6,747 houses in 1989, accounting for an estimated 30% of all house permits issued in Los Angeles County last year, officials said Friday.

The Antelope Valley city, with a population of just 55,000, by far issued the most new house permits of any of the county’s 86 cities during 1989, according to figures provided by the city and a private industry group. The 1989 Palmdale tally exceeded the total of 6,674 for the previous three years combined.

City officials said developers hurried to obtain permits before new fees of up to $6,000 per house took effect in September and October of 1989.

Palmdale City Administrator Robert Toone said the city is not having trouble keeping up with the boom. Toone said developers probably will hoard permits for a time and then spread them out over many months to not flood the housing market.

“I think you’ll see a phasing of that construction,” Toone said, noting that house sales countywide have dropped in recent months. “Those houses are just not going to be built like they have been over the past 36 months,” Toone said.

The 6,747 new house permits last year represented a 130% increase over the city’s 2,929 permits for 1988, city records showed. Nearly 3,600 of the permits were issued in the weeks before the new city fees began.

Developers rushed to avoid a nearly five-fold increase in park fees that pushed the average to $2,106 per house. The city also added new traffic fees of $990 and drainage fees of $1,093 to $3,121 per house.

Toone estimated that the total city fees on a new house in Palmdale now average about $10,000, which he said is consistent with charges in other California cities. Most new houses in Palmdale sell for $130,000 to $150,000.

According to figures provided by the Construction Industry Research Board, an industry group that monitors development activity, Palmdale’s permits accounted for about 30% of the nearly 21,800 issued countywide. Those figures, which were for the first 11 months of 1989, showed that the next closest cities were Los Angeles, with 2,325, and Lancaster with 2,314, said Ben Bartoletto, research director for the board.

However, Lancaster had a year-end rush for permits that was not reflected in the board’s numbers. That rush, spurred by a $957 per house traffic fee that took effect Jan. 1, should push Lancaster past Los Angeles in final rankings for the year.