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Residential Building Construction in the U.S.

Since 1982 residential building construction in the United States has generally lagged behind most other economic indicators. When one takes a closer look at the statistics, several interesting facts come to light. Although new home construction has indeed lagged when taken as a whole nationally, it has instead become focused on suburban metropolitan areas. This phenomenon has created the modern problem of urban sprawl, which affects almost anybody who resides in a major city today. Lastly, while profits from new home sales have grown rapidly (and far ahead of actual new home sales figures), employment in the industry has stagnated. This paper will argue that these seemingly disparate trends are in fact related by the geography of modern employment: our booming technology based economy has focused its growth in urban areas, leading to skyrocketing housing prices and urban sprawl while simultaneously leaving construction employment and nationwide building trends dormant.

In 1982, total construction receipts for single-family homes totaled $5.3 billion. By 1997, receipts had grown to an inflation-adjusted amount of $7.9 billion. This 60% increase is significantly less than the overall growth in construction in the United States in that time period, which almost tripled from $313 billion to $835 billion(US Census Bureau, 1982, 1987, 1997). The causes underlying this startling difference are hard to pin down, but a large part of the blame can probably be ascribed to the significant depression of the late eighties and early nineties. The high interest rates and high inflation figures of the era scared away new home buyers, while government investment in the private sector spurred other aspects of construction (Econedlink, 2000).

While overall growth in residential housing lagged nationwide, selected cities saw their rates of housing growth explode in the nineties. As the technology boom began to heat up our economy, the bul...

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Residential Building Construction in the U.S.. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:16, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1706861.html