Anybody still building?

One of the more way-cool online gizmos to track development in your neighborhood is the Los Angeles Department of City Planning's database of building permits.

The department keeps a fairly up-to-date record (the latest stats are for the first quarter of '08), and it's all organized into nice little charts that let you track activity all over town going back several years.

Here's a link to a slide show showing permits for housing, office, retail and industrial space broken down by neighborhood.

No surprise to Valley residents: Developers pulled the most permits in the south Valley (where I live) in several categories. But a question to the slow-growthers: Are we still worried about too much development now that the economy has crashed?

-- Sharon Bernstein

Comments

[dclogang]

How can there be too much development for houses when a lot of people would love to buy houses?

Just lower the price to match affordability.. duh.

[Miss M]

There are a few new homes under construction in my area, the hillsides of NE Los Angeles. There isn't much buildable land and the construction is expensive so there are still open lots. There are about 4 or 5 houses in some stage of completion in the neighborhood. I think it's now more expensive to build than to buy an existing home, prices have fallen quite a bit.

[xtine]

I'd love a useful link that would help me search by neighborhood, instead of a slide show of pie charts.

[Suzi]

If they are they surely aren't looking at the prices of homes!! What makes them think they can sell the new homes when there's so many homes out there that aren't sold. Look at the stats and you will see that now is not the time to build new homes!! It's time to tear them down!

Sources: http://www.homepricetrend.com

[puckhead]

Miss M,

My parents still live in Mt Washington. There are 3 construction sites close to their house where developers dug into the hillside and started putting up the frame of a house. All 3 sites were abandon, project probably did not make economic sense to continue. Now there are 3 eyesores left where it was once a nice empty hillside.

[radarlovergone]

It's not just houses. Some deep-pocketed dreamer will always want to put up some monstrous mall where it doesn't belong, or whatever. Vigilance still pays.

[Drew]

I've seen several new houses also -- no developments, but a lot of small groupings of 1 to 6 houses "carved into hillsides" -- probably the same ones Miss M is seeing.

Many builders are holding off on cutting prices -- I believe there are tax breaks for builders of "unfinished" properties -- but some builders have aggressively cut prices to get their houses sold.

[Drew]

I will add that many of these new houses began to be built in 2005 or 06, while the market still appeared to be strong.

And many of them still are priced at 2005/06 levels.