Residential building starts increase in Louisville

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The number of new residential building permits for the Louisville metro area has picked up in the third quarter and is nearing last year's pace.

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Braden Lammers

Reporter- Louisville Business First

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The number of new residential building permits for the Louisville metro area has picked up in the third quarter and is nearing last year's pace.

According to a report from The Market Edge, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based company that tracks data and information for the residential construction industry, residential building permits have increased in the third quarter compared with the previous quarter as well as compared with the third quarter of 2013.

In this year's third quarter, 781 residential building permits were issued in Louisville metro, up from 714 during the same period in 2013.

But because home construction in the area got off to a slow start this year, the total of 2,126 residential building permits for the year through Sept. 30 is still slightly behind the year-earlier figure of 2,145 for the same period.

For Jefferson County, new residential building permits rose to 301 in the third quarter from 262 a year earlier. Year-to-date totals are nearly equal, with 789 permits issued through Sept. 30 in 2014, up from 783 permits issued through three quarters in 2013.

The Market Edge study included Jefferson, Bullitt, Hardin, Nelson, Oldham, Shelby and Spencer counties in Kentucky and Clark, Floyd and Harrison counties in Indiana.

Jefferson, Shelby, Clark and Floyd were the only counties that posted increases in residential building permits for the quarter. Spencer County's figure was unchanged, at 25 permits, and the other counties had fewer permits in the quarter.

According to the Market Edge report, 103 residential building permits were issued in the third quarter of 2014 in Clark County, up from 73 permits issued during the same period a year earlier.

Braden Lammers covers these beats: Financial services, residential real estate, law, property and casualty insurance, construction, unions, engineers, architects and agriculture.