Salt Lake City—The most recent banking troubles, rising inflation, and prohibitive mortgage rates are some of the issues affecting the housing market at the moment. And the latest data supports the fact that the market is losing momentum: While the number of completed units has increased every year since 2012, permits and housing starts are dropping nationwide. Utah follows suit with a drop of -19.4 percent compared to 2021.

To get a deeper understanding of how housing construction and construction employment trends evolved over the past decade in Utah and not only, Point2 analyzed historical data on permits, completed and started units, along with employment, incomes, and business data. The report is accompanied by an extensive resource page highlighting the Y-o-Y changes in residential construction over the last decade in all the states and 384 U.S. metros.

Findings for Utah show that:

• The state saw a 22.92 percent increase in permits in 2021, mostly driven by a whopping 54.47 percent increase in multi-family permits as well as a smaller 9.51 percent increase in single-family permits: Out of the 39,058 permits issued in Utah, 11,642 were for the Salt Lake City metro alone. However, permitting activity in the state slowed down in 2022, falling -19.4 percent: Only 31,498 were issued last year. The decrease was most likely caused by a drop in permits for single-family and 2 to 4-unit buildings;
• Permits have been on an upward trend in Utah over the last decade. In fact, the 2022 drop is the first significant decrease since 2012;
• 2022 also saw Salt Lake City metro’s first drop since 2018: the number of permits decreased by -14.85 percent. This was likely caused by a slowdown in single-family authorizations which make up a little less than half of the total number of units. On the other hand, permitting activity for units in multi-family buildings with more than 5 units increased, going from 5,290 permits in 2020 to 5,932 in 2022;
• In line with the state’s overall trend, medium metros also saw Y-o-Y drops in the number of permits issued in 2022. Provo-Orem recorded a -25.93 percent decrease in number of permits, while Ogden-Clearfield saw a -33.7 percent drop. Both metros have seen increases of almost 40 percent back in 2021;
• Permits also went down in smaller metros like St. George and Logan by -8.41 percent and -15.81 percent, respectively;
• In Utah, the total number of employees active in the construction industry represents almost 8 percent of all active employees. Their number kept growing for the past decade, going from 69,225 in 2012 to 130,158 in 2022. Construction-related businesses also grew by 56.19 percent in 2022 compared to 10 years ago;
• Nationwide, St. George and Provo-Orem are among the metros which have the highest shares of construction employees out of the number of employed people within the metro, above 10 percent.

Check out the full set of data and accompanying visuals here: https://www.point2homes.com/news/us-real-estate-news/decade-trends-residential-construction.html