Building Permits for Homes Go Up in April

Orange County’s residential builders continued their slow crawl out of the cellar in April, obtaining permits for future construction of 480 single-family homes and 207 multifamily units--an 18.7% increase from April, 1991.

At the same time, however, the value of non-residential permits--for offices, industrial buildings and retail stores--continued a three-year decline as it fell 44.2% to $45.4 million in April from $81.4 million a year earlier.

The data, in a report issued Thursday by the Construction Industry Research Board in Burbank, supports industry analysts’ predictions that housing will begin a tepid recovery this year while non-residential construction will remain in a slump for another year or more.

In the first four months of the year, residential builders obtained permits for 2,178 units, a 21.6% increase from the 1,791 units for which permits were issued in the same period last year.

Included in this year’s tally were permits for 1,488 single-family homes--a 34.5% increase from 1991--and 690 rental units, almost unchanged from the 685 permits issued a year earlier.

Despite the hefty increase in single-family home permits from early 1991, the 1992 totals are just slightly ahead of the 1,353 permits issued from January through April of 1990--the first year of the home-building slump. And this year’s numbers lag well behind the 2,674 permits issued in the first four months of 1989, according to research board figures.

Non-residential permit values of $180.2 million in the first four months of 1992 were down 37.8% from $289.8 million last year.