Housing Starts Jump Sharply

California builders started construction last month on nearly 8% more homes than a year earlier and 27% more than in January, thanks largely to a surge in condominium starts in downtown Los Angeles, data released Monday showed.

Los Angeles County saw a threefold increase in condos, town homes and other multifamily projects. Builders obtained 2,390 permits in February versus 818 in the year-earlier month, the California Building Industry Assn. said in its monthly report on statewide housing starts. Since the beginning of the year, nearly a third of the state’s 9,800 multifamily units under construction have been in the county.

Statewide multifamily production jumped nearly 64% from a year earlier to 6,593 units, more than double the production levels in January, according to the builders trade group.

Meanwhile, starts for single-family homes dropped nearly 14% to 8,978 units from February 2005 and were down 1.4% from the month before.

Overall construction permits for single-family and multifamily homes totaled 15,571 last month, a 27% increase from the month before.

With limited available land and rising housing prices, developers in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties have turned to constructing smaller, attached units such as condos and town homes. They are typically priced below that of new single-family homes.

Even Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where much of the single-family production has occurred in the last five years, is starting to see an increase in condos and town homes. Last month, the region reported a 62% jump in multifamily permits from a year earlier and only a 6% increase in single-family homes.

Downtown L.A. has seen an explosion of home construction, all of it in the form of for-sale condos and lofts or new apartments for lease. Since 1999, about 7,000 units have been built, and 9,400 are slated for this year, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

Much of Los Angeles’ multifamily production last month was related to developments already in the pipeline, said Holly Schroeder, chief executive of the Building Industry Assn. of Greater Los Angeles and Ventura. “The projects we’re seeing here were submitted [for approval] early last fall.”

The city of Los Angeles has encouraged high-density housing by easing the process for developers to convert office buildings into condos or apartments.

What’s more, the extension of Southern California’s light rail lines has prompted so-called transit-oriented housing development within walking distance of rail stations.

Nevin and Schroeder were wary of reading too much into February’s data. The month tends to be one of the year’s slowest for new construction.