Moving Up in Orange County: The Community Indicators Project, CIRB and BIA Weigh In

The 2008 Orange County Community Indicators Project, an annual report that uses 50 indicators to judge the quality of life in Orange County, came out last month. The report had some interesting information on what type of homes are being built in the OC. In a nutshell, it looks like the trend in Orange County housing is to build up more than out. In other words, more multi-family units are being built than detached units.

As stated in the report, for decades, detached dwellings have been the predominant type of housing featured in Orange County. Although that is still true, this dynamic is changing. As of January 2007, just a little more than half (50.6%) of the 1,024,692 housing units available in the county were detached dwellings. In addition, the type of building permits issued in 2005 and 2006 show that this percentage will be even smaller in the future. Here is how it is stated in the report: “[O]nly 38% of building permits issued in 2006 were for single-family homes. Building permits issued rose 16% between 2005 and 2006, driven by 65% growth in permits for multiple-family dwellings.” The report also states that Orange County has traditionally been mostly suburban, but currently the county is a combination of urban and suburban.

In January 2007, the California Building Industry Association (BIA) saw it the same way: “The BIA’s 2007 homebuilding forecast projects that 7,300 to 8,800 new homes will be built in Orange County this year, the bulk of them apartments and condos….Single-family house construction – long on the wane here – could continue dropping….” (O.C Construction could rise in ’08“)

And more recently a report by the Construction Industry Research Board (CIRB) backs up these findings. According to the CIRB, the February 2008 numbers show that of the 906 housing units authorized in Orange County, 784 were for new multi-family units (which the CIRB defines as apartments and multi-story condos) and only 122 were for single-family homes and side-by-side condos (Jeff Collins, “Issuance of multifamily building permits rises,” Orange County Register, April 4, 2008).

To sum it up, it looks like we’re moving up Orange County.