New home sales explode: 2016 top year in past decade

Local home builders are enjoying a resurgence, hitting their highest number of permits pulled in a decade. This photo from November 2016 shows carpenters Jacob Scoby, left, and Leroy Gillem wrap a home on Freedom Point in the Hunter’s Ridge development in Beavercreek. TY GREENLEES / STAFF

Local home builders are enjoying a resurgence, hitting their highest number of permits pulled in a decade. This photo from November 2016 shows carpenters Jacob Scoby, left, and Leroy Gillem wrap a home on Freedom Point in the Hunter’s Ridge development in Beavercreek. TY GREENLEES / STAFF

Local home builders are enjoying a resurgence, hitting their highest number of permits pulled for single-family homes in a decade.

Dayton region residential builders in all of 2016 pulled 1,886 permits for single-family homes, which represents a 12.3 percent jump from 1,680 total in 2015, according to the Home Builders Association of Dayton.

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Combining single family, apartment and condo units, a total of 159 residential new building permits were issued for December 2016, up 20.5 percent from 132 permits issued in December 2015.

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The total number of permits for 2016 is 2,680 versus 2,008 in 2015 and 2,184 in 2014, the association reported Tuesday.

“It was a super successful year for us,” said Kathleen Unger, executive director of the association.

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The number of permits number single-family homes in 2016 also exceeds 2014 (1,504 permits), 2013, (1,520) and 2012 (1, 444).

The 2016 single-family homes number is the association’s highest since 2007, when 2,159 permits were pulled.

In permits for total buildings by year, 2016’s number of 2,680 was a 33.5 percent improvement over 2015.

The total unit number for 2016 also represents the area’s best performance since 2007, when 2,484 permits were pulled, according to association data.

Dayton-area home sales rose in December 9.5 percent above the same month a year ago, ending 2016 as the best year on record for sales of existing homes, the Dayton Area Board of Realtors said at the time.

A new December record of 1,175 single-family homes and condominiums were sold in December in the Dayton area, compared to 1,073 sales in December 2015.

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