Decade’s Housing Growth Near Historic U.S. Low - BLOOMBERG

The biggest housing boom in the last 30 years was offset by the sharpest slump in a generation,
ensuring that the growth in housing units over the last decade remained at lows not seen since the
Great Depression, the U.S. Census Bureau said today.

The number of homes, apartments and condominiums added over the decade grew 15.9 million to
131.7 million, a 13.6 percent growth rate. Almost 90 percent of the growth occurred between 2000
and 2007. There were 2.1 million housing starts in 2005. Last year, there were 587,000, Census
figures show.

“This is unprecedented,” said Patrick Newport, an IHS Global Insight economist in Boston. “We
just overbuilt by far. We’ve never seen anything like this.”

The overall growth rate was slightly higher than the 13.3 percent registered between 1990 and
2000. It was less than half the 28.7 percent recorded during the 1980s, when the maturing baby
boom generation added 19.7 million homes, and barely half the 23.2 percent growth registered
during the 1940s.

The nation’s rate of homeownership dropped to 65.1 million, down 1.7 percent from 66.2 million in
2000. The Census Bureau said it was the sharpest drop since the 1930s. Even with the drop, the
percentage of homeowners was the second-highest since the 1890s, the government said.

Seven-County Cluster

Seven of the nation’s 3,142 counties accounted for 10 percent of the new housing units. Maricopa
County, Arizona, added 389,000 homes during the decade, followed by Harris County, Texas, which
 added 301,000, and Clark County, Nevada, which increased its count by 281,000. Some of those
counties are now mired in the housing crisis, with empty blocks of overbuilt homes and no buyers.

Three U.S. counties doubled their housing stock. The number of Sumter County homes in central
Florida grew 110 percent. Teton County, Idaho, boosted its number of homes by 108 percent, and
Kendall County, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, grew by 107 percent.

The number of vacant homes grew almost one-third to 15 million, or 11.4 percent of all housing
units, up from 10.4 million in 2000.

Hardest Hit

Some of the areas that were hardest hit by the nation’s foreclosure crisis registered only small
changes in the percentage of homeowners and renters. The number of renters grew in San
Bernadino County, California, to 37.4 percent from 35.5 percent. Maricopa, also hit hard, had its
renter percentage climb to 35.5 percent from 32.5 percent.

Almost 500 counties lost housing units. St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, lost 37 percent, or 9,996
homes, after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005. Neighboring Orleans County lost
25,195 homes, or 11.7 percent of its housing units. McDowell County, West Virginia, formerly home
to an integrated mining operation for U.S. Steel, lost 2,260 homes, or 16.7 percent of its housing
stock.