DALLAS — Read this story and more North Texas business news from the Dallas Business Journal.
Single-family building permit totals have been tallied for 2022, and they’re down by double-digit percentages in many of the historically hot spots for new construction in the suburbs north of Dallas.
Permits to build houses were down 34% in Celina, 30% in Frisco, and 27% in McKinney in 2002 compared to 2021. They’re down 41% in Princeton, 21% in Prosper, and 23% in Anna, according to data compiled by Addison-based Tomlin Investments, which tracks new home construction north of Dallas-Fort Worth.
Sharply higher mortgage rates in 2022 drove down demand for new homes, and homebuilders halted or cut back construction because of the lack of demand.
Here’s how the percentage declines translate into hundreds of fewer new houses in select DFW cities:
Some 1,650 new homes received the necessary city approvals for construction in Celina last year, down from 2,516 in 2021. In Frisco, home building permits were down to 1,326 last year from 1,881 in 2021. McKinney’s permits were down to 1,258 in 2022 vs. 1,720 in 2021.
Princeton’s residential construction permits were down to 1,071 houses last year from 1,776 in 2021. Prosper’s permits fell to 967 homes from 1,221. In Anna, 867 building permits were issued last year vs. 1,129 in 2021.
There were exceptions to the declines in North Texas, including Denton, Melissa and Little Elm.
In Denton, permits were up 28% to 1,227 homes in 2022 from 955 in 2021. Melissa rose 13% to 906 homes from 801 in 2021. Little Elm was up a little bit, with 1,295 new-home permits in 2022 compared to 1,292 in 2021.
For all of 2022, builders across North Texas initiated construction on 48,756 homes — down 16.2% from 2021, according to Dallas-based housing analyst Residential Strategies Inc.
And the declining building permits in 2022, which tanked especially hard at the end of the year, will spell a slow start for this year and probably a slow construction year throughout, given the still-high mortgage rates, said Ted Wilson, principal with Residential Strategies, in the report his company produced.