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Homebuilding boom makes D-FW the second biggest construction market in 2021

Only New York City had more building starts in the first six months of the year.

Pushed ahead by a boom in residential building, the Dallas-Fort Worth area had the second-highest construction total in the country in the first half of 2021.

Only New York City saw more building activity in the first six months of the year.

The D-FW area had $14.6 billion in construction starts, according to the latest update from Dodge Data & Analytics. About two-thirds of the new building activity in North Texas was residential.

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And total building starts were up 24% from the first half of 2020.

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The D-FW area led the U.S. in starts of commercial buildings and apartments.

And starts of single-family homes in the area are up more than 40% this year.

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The Houston area ranked third nationally with $11.2 billion in total new construction activity.

All but seven of the major U.S. metro markets in Dodge Data’s survey had higher building start activity in the first six months of 2021 than in the same period last year.

Construction activity across the country has been rebounding since the COVID-19 pandemic slowed building in the early months of last year.

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Even with the gains this year, building sector analysts worry that rising construction material prices and supply chain issues could slow starts.

“Unabated materials price inflation has driven a significant deceleration in single-family construction,” Richard Branch, chief economist for Dodge Data & Analytics, said in the latest report. “On the other hand, the nascent recovery in nonresidential buildings has continued on as projects pile up in the planning stages.

“These mixed signals coming from both residential and nonresidential construction starts suggest that recovery from the pandemic will remain uneven in coming months as rising materials prices and labor shortages weigh on the industry.”

Comparing other Texas markets, Austin building starts rose 10% in the first half of 2021 compared with last year, and building starts in San Antonio were 14% higher.

The largest construction declines in the nation were in Portland (minus-32%) and Chicago (minus-26%).

(Dodge Data & Analytics )