Starts Watch: 1997 Totals

United States residential building permits totaled 1,441,136 housing units in 1997 according to the C40 Housing Units Authorized by Building Permit report issued by the US Census Bureau. This is a 1.1% increase from the 1996 total of 1,425,616 units.

We have analyzed the starts information by state in a series of tables and maps. All maps are now in GIF format as well as Acrobat format. For offline printing and analysis, we recommend the Acrobat format because of the Acrobat Reader's ability to magnify the map area and its better printing resolution.

Florida was the state with the most overall housing permits (133,990), followed by Texas (125,974) and California (109,589). The states with the fewest permits were Wyoming (1,669), Vermont (1,831), and Montana (2,472).

• Table with complete permit data by state for 1997 and 1996 in alphabetical order by state
• Table with 1997 totals, plus percent change from 1996.
• Map of states by total residential permits: GIF format | Acrobat format
• Map of states by percent change in total units permitted, 1996 to 1997: GIF format | Acrobat format

Single-family permits for the United States totaled 1,062,396 in 1997, down 0.7% from 1,069,472 in 1996. By state, the highest number of single-family permits was in Florida (90,309), followed by California (84,149) and Texas (82,180). The lowest number of single-family permits was in Wyoming (1,288), followed by North Dakota (1,488) and Montana (1,501).

• Map of total single-family permits by state: GIF format | Acrobat format
• Map of percent change in single-family permits from 1996 to 1997: GIF format |Acrobat format

Multifamily permits totaled 378,740 in 1997, up 6.3% from 356,144 in 1996. By state, the most multifamily permits were in Texas (43,794), followed by Florida (43,681) and California (25,440). The lowest number of multifamily permits was in Vermont (182), followed by Rhode Island (348), and Wyoming (381).

• Map of total multifamily permits by state: GIF format | Acrobat format
• Map of percent change in multifamily permits from 1996 to 1997 by state: GIF format | Acrobat format
• Map of ratio of multifamily permits to total permits, 1997: GIF format | Acrobat format

Additional Analyses

In addition to the analyses we have been conducting every month, we compared the 1997 permit totals to those for 1992 (five years) and 1987 (ten years) to put the totals in greater historical perspective

• 1992 to 1997
  • Map of states by percent change in total units permitted, 1992 to 1997 : GIF format | Acrobat format
  • Map of percent change in single-family permits from 1992 to 1997 : GIF format |Acrobat format
  • Map of percent change in multifamily permits from 1996 to 1997 by state: GIF format | Acrobat format
• 1987 to 1997
  • Map of states by percent change in total units permitted, 1987 to 1997: GIF format | Acrobat format
  • Map of percent change in single-family permits from 1987 to 1997: GIF format |Acrobat format
  • Map of percent change in multifamily permits from 1987 to 1997 by state: GIF format | Acrobat format

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