Background Perspective:

In the metropolitan Richmond area for most of the 2000’s, a normal market would be the construction of 3,800 to 4,200 new homes per year. During the “Bubble” years of 2003 through 2006, new home construction got up to about 6,000 units per year. Then the Bubble burst.

Since the Great Recession, new housing construction in Richmond has revived but has never gotten back to “normal”. To date, since the Great Recession, the greatest production of housing was almost 3,800 per year in 2018. The first half of 2018 the pace of construction would have gotten us back to normal, but increased mortgage rates led to a reduction in sales and deliveries in the second half of 2018.

I do not yet have the 2019 data, but the new housing market in 2019 may have exceeded 3,800 units. If so, it will be the first time since the Great Recession that the industry in Richmond was “normal”.

During the Great Recession, the trades men/women who enable construction of homes were decimated. The capacity destroyed during the Great Recession has not yet been rebuilt. This lack of capacity to construct homes is another force in the housing crises.